Assured, Safe and Traceable

The Advanced ASSET Technology Centre is a linchpin of the Insitute for Global Food Security (IGFS), Queen’s University Belfast. In July 2020 it was listed as a ‘Centre of Expertise’ by the Food Authenticity Network – a Defra initiative. ASSET provides leading platforms to facilitate increasingly rapid identification of feed and food contamination and adulteration.

The mass spectrometry element features a range of hyphenated MS instruments. Various LC-MS/MS and GC-MS are available for tailored measurements of predetermined analytes such as toxins, pesticides or targeted metabolomics. Also available are high resolution accurate mass instruments (QTof) coupled to UPLC for non-targeted metabolomic analysis or equipped with an Ambient ionisation source such as REIMS, DESI or DART.

Equipment includes:

• Mass spectometry REIMS research system, incorporating ‘iKnife’
• DART (Direct Analysis in Real Time) ionisation couple to single quadrupole detector
• UPLC-QTof with associated processing software workflow suite
• Spectroscopy instrumentation
  • FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-red)
• NIR (Near Infrared) in benchtop and portable format
• Raman

Impact

Promoting global food integrity and enhancing the sustainability and global marketability of UK agrifood products.

Supporting the Grand Challenges facing livestock food production:

Food Safety, Quality and Integrity