Protecting the food chain: Advanced HRMS strategies for contaminants in water and soil
Join Lorena Manzano as she demonstrates how advanced HRMS technology provides the sensitivity and confidence needed to monitor chemical contaminants, protecting both agricultural productivity and public health.
This webinar will provide an overview of advanced high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) strategies for monitoring pharmaceuticals and pesticides in complex environmental and agricultural matrices. Lorena Manzano will share recent findings on the occurrence, persistence and potential transfer of these contaminants from reclaimed water to soils and crops, highlighting how innovative analytical solutions can support safer water reuse practices.
Water scarcity and the increasing use of reclaimed water for irrigation create both opportunities and challenges for agriculture. While reuse contributes to sustainability, it also introduces chemical contaminants into the food chain. Conventional monitoring approaches often fail to provide the sensitivity, selectivity and robustness required to detect low-level residues in highly complex samples such as soils and edible plant tissues.
This webinar will address these challenges by discussing the role of HRMS, with a particular focus on how ZenoTOF technology enhances confidence in compound identification and quantification. Attendees will learn about key trends in environmental risk assessment, the importance of tracking persistent pharmaceuticals such as carbamazepine, and the role of multi-residue analysis in ensuring food safety.
Case studies from real-world greenhouse experiments will be presented, demonstrating examples of pharmaceutical and pesticide transfer from wastewater to soils and edible crops. Finally, the session will provide actionable insights into how cutting-edge HRMS can be integrated into monitoring programmes to better protect both agricultural productivity and public health.
You will learn:
- Understand the occurrence and persistence of pharmaceuticals and pesticides in reclaimed water, irrigated soils, and edible crops.
- Explore how HRMS ZenoTOF technology enhances detection, identification, and quantification of contaminants in complex matrices.
- Learn from greenhouse case studies on pharmaceutical and pesticide accumulation under real-world irrigation practices.
- Identify key challenges and opportunities for safe wastewater reuse in agriculture and food safety monitoring.
Presenter: Lorena Manzano Sánchez, PHD, University of Almería
Lorena Manzano, PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Almería, is an expert in advanced chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques. With over six years of experience at the European Union Reference Laboratory for Fruits and Vegetables (EURL-FV), her work has focused on the application of LC- and GC-based high- and low-resolution mass spectrometry for the monitoring of pesticide residues in plant-derived matrices.
