Glyphosate quantified in black tea by automatically optimized LC-FAIMS MS/MS

摘要

The organophosphate herbicide glyphosate is a common residual contaminant of produce. Quantitation by LC-MS/MS is typically highly noise-limited in complex phytochemical matrices due to the presence of isobaric interfering MS~2 peaks. Since glyphosate has a narrow and distinct compensation voltage (CV) tuning in FAIMS, FAIMS presents itself as an ideal orthogonal separation technique for reduction of noise. We automatically optimize CV for glyphosate in an integrated compound optimization workflow, and use the optimally tuned FAIMS to analyze the nano LC chromatography of glyphosate in black tea samples and compare signal response to data obtained without the use of FAIMS. We observe that FAIMS allows for the detection of lower levels of glyphosate concentration (by more than a factor of 10).