Advances in Greener and Sustainable Sample Preparation for Tropane Alkaloid Analysis in Foods

Abstract

In the current context, Green Analytical Chemistry (GAC) focuses on promoting analytical methods that are more efficient and environmentally friendly. One of the fundamental principles of GAC is to reduce or eliminate the use of hazardous substances and minimize waste generation. One of the ways to achieve this is through the adoption of direct analytical techniques that can omit the sample preparation step. However, in the case of the determination of natural toxins, such as tropane alkaloids (TAs), carrying out direct analysis can be difficult due to several factors. For example, these compounds are often present in foods of plant origin with very complex matrices, in low concentrations, which makes their direct detection and quantification difficult. Therefore, in this context, sample preparation remains essential to clean up extracts and to concentrate analytes prior to their analysis. This chapter highlights the crucial importance of sample preparation in the determination of TAs. It emphasizes the fundamental role of miniaturized techniques and new materials applied in such techniques, which can contribute significantly to the search for more sustainable analytical practices. In this sense, an evaluation is carried out using the AGREEprep metric to analyze the miniaturized methods already published. This metric allows for a systematic evaluation of sample preparation methods in terms of their efficiency, sustainability, and compliance with the principles of Green Sample Preparation (GSP), which arises to better the principles of GAC. Positive and negative points of existing methods are identified, and possible modifications are suggested to improve their performance and make sample preparation greener.