Applications of direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (DART-MS) in food analysis: A review.

Direct analysis in real time (DART) combined with mass spectrometry (MS) detection has become one of the most broadly used analytical approaches for the direct molecular characterization of food samples with regard to their chemical quality, safety, origin and authentication. The major merits of DART-MS for food analysis include high chemical sensitivity and specificity, high speed and throughput of analysis, simplicity as well as the obviation of tedious sample preparation and solvents. The recent applications of DART coupled with different mass analyzers, including quadrupole, ion trap, Orbitrap, time of flight and others, are discussed. In addition, sample pretreatment methods that have been coupled with DART-MS are discussed. We summarize the applications of DART-MS in food science and industry published in the period from 2005 to this date. The applications and analytical characteristics are systematically categorized across the three major types of foods: solid foods, liquid foods and viscous foods. DART-MS has proved its high suitability for the direct, rapid and high-throughput molecular analysis of very different food samples with minimal or no sample preparation, thus offering a high-speed alternative to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) approaches that are traditionally employed in food analysis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.