UPLC-MS: An Emerging Novel Technology and Its Application in Food Safety

Over the past decade, food safety has become an important issue worldwide due to higher incidences of food contamination. Currently, one of the great challenges in food safety is the analysis of emerging food contaminants. Moreover, the scope, relevance, and level of food safety and testing have never been in such complexity than in today’s global marketplace. In recent years, a novel technology ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with mass spectroscopy (MS) has been developed to estimate the food contaminants, as well as food components with better accuracy, sensitivity, precision, and high throughput. UPLC–MS works on van Deemter principle, which states that, the flow rate of smaller particles are much faster in compare with large particles as well as unfolding the correlation of flow rate and plate height. Additionally, various food components as well as food contaminants such as vitamins, amino acid, metabolite identification, adulteration, forensic testing, toxicity studies, phytoconstituents, pesticide in agriculture, antibiotic residue, hormones, dyes and pigment analysis can be performed using UPLC–MS. Moreover, uniqueness of UPLC-MS and its wide range of application makes it an important tool for food safety laboratory around the world.