A green, simplified, and efficient experimental setup for a high-throughput screening of agri-food by-products - From polar to nonpolar metabolites in sugarcane solid residues.

From an environmental perspective, searching for useful compounds in agri-food by-products by employing inefficient and polluting analytical procedures is paradoxical. This work aimed to develop a green, simplified, and highly efficient experimental setup for extracting and tentatively identifying the broadest range of metabolites in sugarcane solid by-products collected directly within the industrial mills. Nine different extraction approaches were investigated side-by-side, including three reference methods. Based on the extraction and environmental performances assessed by two complementary metrics called Analytical-Eco Scale and the Analytical Greenness Calculator, it was possible to reach two highly efficient two liquid-phase extractions while avoiding harmful solvents and traditional time, energy, and solvent consuming sample preparation steps, such as solvent evaporation, metabolite concentration, re-suspension, and derivatization. The simultaneously produced hydroethanolic and n-heptane extracts were directly analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography, both coupled to mass spectrometry, respectively, leading to the annotation of a large dynamic range of compounds from information rich spectral data. Up to 111 metabolites were identified in a single matrix, from highly polar sucrose to nonpolar wax ester C53 in a single extraction. Orientin, apigenin-6-C-glucosylrhamnoside, 1-octacosanol, octacosanal, and other bioactive compounds were identified in these abundantly available by-products, which are currently just burned to produce energy. The best two methods developed here (Two-Liquid-Phase Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction with Probe and Two-Liquid-Phase Dynamic Maceration) appeared as a green, simplified, and highly efficient procedures to qualitatively profile metabolites in complex solid matrices.

Green chromatographic fingerprinting: an environmentally friendly approach for the development of separation methods for fingerprinting complex matrices.

A chromatographic fingerprint is a comprehensive method that reveals the distinctive pattern of peaks across the chromatogram for a given sample. It is considered an effective strategy to assess the identity and quality of herbal materials, as well as for the control of the quality of their derived products. HPLC is the most employed technique for these purposes and it is used routinely for quality control in industry. Hence, its impact on the environment should not be neglected. This work provides a rational and generic procedure to qualitatively fingerprint complex matrices. Resource- and time-saving experimental designs were selected; an alternative safer organic solvent was tested and a time-saving and innovative response entitled the green chromatographic fingerprinting response was developed and employed. This procedure was applied in the development of chromatographic fingerprints for extracts of Bauhinia forficata and Casearia sylvestris. Moreover, the response proposed here can be combined with a complementary metric available in the literature to compare methods using different solvents. According to this, the chromatographic fingerprints developed here using ethanol as the organic solvent provided a performance better than that of reference methods in which more harmful acetonitrile or methanol were employed.

Capillary electrophoretic separation of mono- and di-saccharides with dynamic pH junction and implementation in microchips.

An electrophoretic method for the separation of derivatised mono- and di-saccharides with on-line concentration via dynamic pH junction has been developed and optimised in capillaries. Dynamic pH junction is perfectly suited for on-line concentration of derivatised sugars due to the acidic derivatisation conditions, however, most reagents for carbohydrates are not ionisable, requiring the use of the novel reagent, O-2-[aminoethyl]fluorescein. Optimisation of the separation selectivity yielded best separations with 170 mM ammonium borate buffer at pH 8.60 in an acrylamide coated capillary. When using an injection comprising 7% of the capillary volume and detection via laser induced fluorescence (LIF) with an argon ion laser, limits of detection as low as 0.13 nM for maltose were obtained, which was 10 times lower than could be achieved without on-line concentration. In order to implement this system in a glass/PDMS microchip, the low pH sample was introduced into the microchannels via a cathodic pH independent electro-osmotic flow (EOF) generated using a poly(dimethyldiallylmethyl-ammonium chloride) (PDADMAC)/poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS) polyelectrolyte multilayer coating. Optimisation of the injection volume in capillaries greatly simplified translation to the microchip platform, with the optimum capillary sample volume of 7%, dictating the use of an off-set cross with a volume 7% of the separation channel. Microchip separations of maltose, glucose, galactose and allose with dynamic pH junction, were achieved within 120 s, with the limit of detection of maltose using a light emitting diode induced fluorescence (LEDIF) detection system being 790 nM. This is 10 times lower than that achieved without concentration, and is lower than other reports of derivatised sugars using LEDIF detection. This is the first implementation of on-line concentration via a dynamic pH junction in a microchip, and significantly, the improvement in sensitivity achieved when translated to the microchip was equivalent to that achieved in capillaries.