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Rapid detection of carbamate pesticide residues using microchip electrophoresis combining amperometric detection

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Abstract

The long-term consumption of food with pesticide residues has harmful effects on human health and the demand for pesticide detection technology tends to be miniaturized and instant. To this end, we demonstrated the first application of indirectly detecting two carbamate pesticides, metolcarb and carbaryl, by gold nanoparticle–modified indium tin oxide electrode in dual-channel microchip electrophoresis and amperometric detection (ME-AD) system. m-Cresol and α-naphthol were obtained after pesticide hydrolysis in alkaline solution, and then separated and detected by ME-AD. Parameters including the detection potential and running buffer concentration and pH were optimized to improve the detection sensitivity and separation efficiency. Under the optimal conditions, the two analytes were completely separated within 80 s. m-Cresol and α-naphthol presented a wide linear range from 1 to 100 μM, with limits of detection of 0.16 μM and 0.34 μM, respectively (S/N = 3). Moreover, the reliability of this system was demonstrated by analyzing metolcarb and carbaryl in spiked vegetable samples.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81202378 and 81311140268), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University (1053320183003 and 1053320190355), the Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate (CX20190246), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee of China (JCYJ20170413105329648), the Science and Technology Program of Hunan Province (2017SK2164), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2020JJ9020).

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  1. Zixuan Ren and Xingchen Zhou contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, 410013, Hunan, China

    Zixuan Ren, Xingxing Gao, Yan Tan, Songwen Tan, Wenfang Liu & Chuanpin Chen

  2. Department of Pharmacy, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, 410013, Hunan, China

    Xingchen Zhou

  3. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, Guangdong, China

    Huaying Chen

  4. College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan Institute of Science and Technology, Yueyang, 414006, Hunan, China

    Yaonan Tong

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  1. Zixuan Ren
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Contributions

Chuanpin Chen designed the work and contributed significantly to the analysis and manuscript preparation; Zixuan Ren, Xingchen Zhou, Xingxing Gao, and Yan Tan performed material preparation, data collection, and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Zixuan Ren and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chuanpin Chen.

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Ren, Z., Zhou, X., Gao, X. et al. Rapid detection of carbamate pesticide residues using microchip electrophoresis combining amperometric detection. Anal Bioanal Chem 413, 3017–3026 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-021-03237-3

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