The massive use of pyrethroid pesticides in agriculture has brought growing concerns about food safety due to their several harmful effects on human health, especially through the accumulation of the food chain. To date, most of the available analytical methods for pyrethroids still suffer from insufficient detection universality, complicated sample pretreatment, and detection processes, which severely limit their practical applications. Herein, a novel Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-assisted host-guest supramolecular nanoassembly is reported, for the first time, successfully realizing ratiometric fluorescent detection of pyrethroids in real samples through the indicator displacement assay (IDA) mechanism. This method is capable of detecting a broad spectrum of pyrethroids, including bifenthrin, cyfluthrin, cypermethrin, deltamethrin, etofenprox, fenvalerate, and permethrin, with ultrahigh detection sensitivity, great selectivity, high anti-interference ability, and, in particular, distinct emission color response from red to green. Such a large chromatic response makes this method available for fast and on-site detection of pyrethroids in real samples with the aid of several simple portable analytical apparatuses.
Keywords: food safety; insecticide analysis; on-site insecticide detection; pyrethroids; ratiometric fluorescent probes.