Occurrence of glyphosate in beer from the Latvian market

ABSTRACT

A sensitive LC-MS/MS method for the determination of glyphosate in beer has been developed, validated, and applied to analyse 100 beer samples from 24 different producers and distributors in Latvia. The selected samples represented most beer brands and varieties sold in local supermarkets. Different procedures for sample preparation and chromatographic separation were compared. The final version of the method consisted of solid phase extraction, chromatographic separation on aminopropyl stationary phase, and detection using tandem mass spectrometry. The concentration of glyphosate in beer varied from below the LOD of 0.2 μg kg⁻¹ up to 150 μg kg⁻¹, higher than previously reported. Significantly higher (p < 0.01) content of glyphosate was observed in beers that did not have the country of production disclosed on the label and were sold in local supermarkets by distributors from Latvia (1.8 μg kg⁻¹ median concentration in locally produced beer, 6.7 μg kg⁻¹ in beer of undisclosed origin).

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Glyphosate
• occurrence
• beer
• LC-MS/MS

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Research Program ‘Agricultural Resources for Sustainable Production of Qualitative and Healthy Foods in Latvia’ (AgroBioRes) project No. 4 ‘Sustainable use of local agricultural resources for qualitative and healthy food product development’.

Declaration of interest

All the authors declare that they do not have any conflict of interest and have significantly contributed to this research.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Program “Agricultural Resources for Sustainable Production of Qualitative and Healthy Foods in Latvia” [(AgroBioRes) project No. 4].