title: An overview of multidimensional liquid phase separations in food analysis.
abstract: Food safety is a priority public health concern that demands analytical methods capable to detect low concentration level of contaminants (e.g. pesticides and antibiotics) in different food matrices. Due to the high complexity of these matrices, a sample preparation step is in most cases mandatory to achieve satisfactory results being usually tedious, lengthy, and prone to the introduction of errors. For this reason, many research groups have focused efforts on the development of online systems capable to do the cleanup, concentration, and separation steps at once through multidimensional separation techniques (MDS). Among several possible setups, the most popular are the multidimensional chromatographic techniques (MDC) that consist in combining more than one mobile and/or stationary phase to provide a satisfactory separation. In the present review, we selected a variety of multidimensional separation systems used for food contaminant analysis in order to discuss the instrumentation aspects, the concept of orthogonality, column approaches used in these systems, and new materials that can be used in these columns. Selected classes of contaminants present in food matrices are introduced and discussed as example of the potential applications of multidimensional liquid phase separation techniques in food safety.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry of São Carlos,  University of São Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Maraíssa Silva
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Franco
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry of São Carlos,  University of São Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Rodrigo Nogueira
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Padovan
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry of São Carlos,  University of São Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Bruno Henrique
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Fumes
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry of São Carlos,  University of São Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Fernando Mauro
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Lanças
mesh_terms: D002853:Chromatography, Liquid / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005504:Food Analysis / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Column switching instrumentation; Columns approaches; Comprehensive liquid chromatography; Multidimensional separations; Orthogonality