Longitudinal Plant Health Monitoring via High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Screening Workflows: Application to a Fertilizer Mediated Tomato Growth Experiment.

Significant efforts have been spent in the modern era towards implementing environmentally friendly procedures like composting to mitigate the negative effects of intensive agricultural practices. In this context, a novel fertilizer was produced via the hydrolysis of an onion-derived compost, and has been previously comprehensively chemically characterized. In order to characterize its efficacy, the product was applied to tomato plants at five time points to monitor plant health and growth. Control samples were also used at each time point to eliminate confounding parameters due to the plant's normal growth process. After harvesting, the plant leaves were extracted using aq. MeOH (70:30, v/v) and analyzed via UPLC-QToF-MS, using a C18 column in both ionization modes (±ESI). The data-independent (DIA/bbCID) acquisition mode was employed, and the data were analyzed by MS-DIAL. Statistical analysis, including multivariate and trend analysis for longitudinal monitoring, were employed to highlight the differentiated features among the controls and treated plants as well as the time-point sequence. Metabolites related to plant growth belonging to several chemical classes were identified, proving the efficacy of the fertilizer product. Furthermore, the efficiency of the analytical and statistical workflows utilized was demonstrated.

Screening of legacy and emerging substances in surface water, sediment, biota and groundwater samples collected in the Siverskyi Donets River Basin employing wide-scope target and suspect screening.

Siverskyi Donets is the fourth longest river in Ukraine and its ecosystem is heavily affected by numerous agricultural and industrial activities. An impact of the on-going armed military conflicts in the Eastern Ukraine to the overall pollution by the chemicals has been studied. Considering the uncontrolled activities in the catchment due to the conflict, there is a high demand to assess the contamination status of the Siverskyi Donets basin. In this study, the occurrence of the EU Water Framework Directive priority substances, selected physicochemical parameters and wide-range emerging contaminants were investigated in surface water, groundwater, biota and river sediments samples from 13 sampling sites in the river basin. The study included metals, inorganic, non-polar and polar organic contaminants. The wide-scope target screening of 2316 substances and suspect screening of 2219 substances revealed occurrence of 83 compounds in the studied samples. A few industrial chemicals such as plasticizers bisphenol A and DEHP, as well as flame retardant brominated diphenylethers were found to be potentially hazardous to the ecosystem, exceeding the established legacy environmental quality standards (EQS) or the provisional no-effect concentration (PNEC) values. River sediment samples contained traces of long-term banned chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and degradation products of DDT (p,p'-DDD and p,p'-DDE). A simplified risk assessment based on comparison of measured concentration of the detected compounds against their (eco)toxicity threshold values from the NORMAN Ecotoxicology Database has been performed to aid their prioritization in future monitoring and, eventually, establishing the list of Siverskyi Donets River Basin Specific Pollutants. A comparison with the recent similar studies in the Dniester and Dnieper river basins in Ukraine has shown that the overall pollution by chemicals in the Siverskyi Donets basin is significantly lower.