Recently, supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has attracted considerable attention for their application in food analysis. The use of supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2), as a mobile phase for SFC, with its low viscosity and high molecular diffusiveness, results in shorter analysis time and lower consumption of organic solvents as compared to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In addition, with recent improvements in its detection system, SFC has shown satisfactory selectivity and sensitivity. Thus, although the composition of food is complex, SFC remains a powerful tool in food analysis with some simple sample pretreatment techniques, such as liquid-liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction, and QuEChERS. Here, we summarize the applications of SFC in food quality and safety from 2012 to 2018, and mainly focus on sample pretreatment strategies and analysis conditions.
Keywords: Food analysis; pesticide analysis; sample pretreatment; supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC).