Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Archives

Keeping Holiday Tables Safe: Streamlining Agilent in South Africa

Why is food safety more challenging during South Africa’s festive season?

From lively braais to large family feasts, the holiday season means a surge in food production and consumption. This increase brings challenges in managing contaminants like pesticides on fresh produce or residues in packaged meats. Ensuring food safety is vital to protect public health and uphold brand reputation.

Challenges faced by labs during peak testing periods

High sample volumes and diverse food types place huge demands on testing labs. Manual sample preparation can slow down processes and increase errors, risking delays in identifying contaminants and potentially allowing unsafe food products to reach consumers.

How do Agilent LC/MS and GC/MS systems improve contaminant detection?

Agilent’s advanced Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS) and Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) platforms enable rapid, sensitive detection of pesticides, antibiotics, mycotoxins, and other harmful residues in complex food samples, ensuring accuracy even under pressure.

In one study, Agilent demonstrated its gas chromatography (GC) and mass spectrometry (MS) systems achieved “excellent linearity” in testing for over 200 pesticides across a wide dynamic range (0.1 to 5,000 ppb).

🖥️ Watch the A Novel Workflow to Determine over 1000 Pesticide Residues webinar to learn more about this comprehensive, joint LC-MS and GC-MS workflow.

Agilent LC/MS & GC/MS instruments.

The role of automation in sample preparation

Raykol’s automated sample preparation systems help labs handle larger sample volumes consistently and quickly, reducing human error and freeing analysts to focus on data interpretation. This is critical when the pressure is on to deliver reliable results fast.

Raykol Automated Solid Phase Extraction system visual.

Why is real-time monitoring important for food safety during holidays?

Continuous quality control lets producers and retailers react promptly to contamination risks, protecting consumers and maintaining compliance with South African and international food safety regulations, especially critical during holiday spikes in demand.

📚 Download the Contaminants Screening Using High-Resolution GC/Q-TOF Application Note to discover how to increase confidence for both screening and quantitative workflows.

How can producers and retailers stay compliant and build consumer trust?

Investing in cutting-edge testing technology and automation not only helps companies meet evolving regulatory requirements but also demonstrates a commitment to consumer safety, key for maintaining trust during high-visibility holiday seasons.

📚 Download the Dioxins Analysis in Food and Feed Application Note to discover new possibilities for faster separations.

Upgrade your food safety testing workflows now

To keep holiday tables safe and operations smooth, labs and food suppliers should leverage Agilent’s LC/MS and GC/MS instruments alongside Raykol’s automated sample prep solutions.

🖥️ Watch the Analysis of Heavy Metals and Minerals webinar to learn about workflow solutions for analysis of nutritional parameters in food, through faster identification and detection at low levels.

TL;DR – Key Takeaways

Holiday season increases food safety testing demands in South Africa.
Manual prep and high sample loads create bottlenecks and risk errors.
Agilent LC/MS and GC/MS systems enable sensitive, fast contaminant detection.
Raykol automation speeds up sample prep, improving lab throughput and accuracy.
Real-time monitoring and robust workflows safeguard consumers and ensure compliance.

Making Better Connections in GC and GC/MS Systems

This presentation will cover products from Agilent that make GC connections more robust by utilising new technologies that makes connections easier, leak free and more inert for any application.

Topics covered include: Self Tightening Stainless Column Nuts and ferrules, Press Fits, UltiMetal Plus and Stainless Steel Capillary Tubing, Ferrule Pre-swaging installation tool and MS interface installation tool, among others.

Speaker

Mark Sinnott
Application Engineer
Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Mark Sinnott works for Agilent Technologies as a Technical Support Engineer in the Consumables and Supplies Division (CSD). In his position at Agilent, Mark performs technical support and applications assistance to gas chromatographers worldwide. He has more than 22 years of experience in gas chromatography, including environmental analysis of compounds in air, soil and water matrices, including dissolved gas analysis for the electrical industry. Mark holds a Master’s Degree in Chemistry from California State University, Sacramento, and currently resides in Twin Falls Idaho.

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Reliability of Multi-residue Identification

It is of utmost importance to ensure that the analytical results from residue testing for food products are reliable. “False positive” findings of hazardous residues in food result in safe product being rejected and leading to potential huge financial and juristic implications. “False negative” findings result in contaminated product being on the shelf and increase the risk of a foodborne disease. The reliability of testing results depends on the type of methodology and the performance criteria. Identification is the important step before a residue is reported. Procedures for identification should be rigorous and depend on sensitivity and selectivity of the MS techniques. The causes of “false positive” and “false negative” derived from both QqQ-MS and HR-MS detection will be discussed. The approaches of establishing a “fit-for-purpose” methodology and identification criteria for both QqQ-MS and HR-MS will be introduced. This will help the testing labs build the protocols/procedures to follow to reduce the incidence of “false detections”; help set up the criteria for identification; and help deliver the highly accurate results.

Speaker

Hui Zhao
Pre-Sales Application Engineer
Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Hui has 13 years of industry experience developing and validating analytical methods for food/feed nutrition, food safety, dietary supplements and botanicals testing, using a variety of analytical techniques including LC-TQ, LC-QTOF, LC-DAD and GC-MS and a breadth of sample preparation methodologies. She has worked as a Research Scientist at Monsanto, EPL-Bioanalytical Services, Tate & Lyle, Inc. and Lead Staff Scientist at Covance Food Solutions. She holds a Master of Science degree in Analytical Chemistry from Lanzhou University in China and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Missouri.

Prior to becoming a Pre-Sales AE, Hui worked as an LCMS application scientist in Agilent’s global market development group where her primary focus was food and environmental market development.

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