3P-22 PDF
Bioimaging of the Fungicide Fludioxonil in Formulation-Coated Wheat Seeds utilising ToF-SIMS
ToF-SIMS has been increasingly widely used in recent years to look at biological matrices, in particular for biomedical research, although there is still a lot of development needed to maximise the value of this technique in life sciences research. The main issue for biological matrices is the complexity of the mass spectra and therefore the difficulty to specifically and precisely detect analytes in the biological sample.
Here it was explored the use of ToF-SIMS in the agrochemical field, which remains a largely unexplored area for this technique. In particular, it was selected Fludioxonil, a halogenated fungicide, as a model compound to test the approach. A TOF-SIMS V (IONTOF) with a Bi3+ primary ion source was then used for imaging fludioxonil in treated wheat seeds, in negative ion mode.
One challenge to overcome in this study was the sample preparation. Different embedding media were tested to find the most suitable for ToF-SIMS analyses and for seed samples. It was possible to detect and localise the fungicide in the coated wheat seeds, and in actual treated commercial seed samples. Future experiments will focus on the application of ToF-SIMS, with high sensitivity and spatial resolution, to detect agrochemicals in biological matrices in general.