Direct Analysis of Polar Pesticides Without Derivatization

Glyphosate is a polar pesticide widely used as a garden herbicide. It is an ingredient in the world’s bestselling weed killer, which farmers consider one of their best solutions to their super weed problems.

However, the chemical has become one of the most controversial topics as concerns about health implications increase. What’s more, lack of rigorous testing methods has also drawn criticism. Yet, regulators across seem to have differing opinions on these issues and its widely used in farming is still authorized.

Many contemporary methods fail to address reproducibility and sensitivity. Consequently, labs are seeking even more efficient and robust analytical testing methods to help identify as many polar pesticides in food, feed, and environment, within in a single analysis.  

There are 2 constraints you need to know need to know when evaluating glyphosate testing methods:

While ion chromatography has been shown to be beneficial for separation, there are downsides. The need for a suppressor is detrimental to MS analysis and the inefficiency of having to change inlet systems on a mass spectrometers systems that heavily work in reverse-phase LC.

Previous analytical strategies, especially for LC-MS/MS analysis, have required laborious and often time-consuming derivatization of glyphosate and its metabolites to allow the polar nature of the compounds to be identified more easily under reverse-phase LC-MS conditions.