Development of colloidal gold-based flow-through and lateral-flow immunoassays for the rapid detection of the insecticide carbaryl

One-step membrane-based competitive colloidal gold-based immunoassays in flow-through and lateral-flow formats for the rapid detection of carbaryl were developed. Nitro-cellulose membrane strip was separately coated with goat anti-rabbit IgG (control line) and carbaryl hapten-OVA conjugate (test line). Anti-carbaryl antibody labeled with colloidal gold particles was firstly incubated with carbaryl. A positive reaction as a result of the remaining antibody-gold conjugate combining with antigen coated on the membrane was obvious by visual detection, with detection limits for flow-through and lateral flow of 50 and l00 μg/L, respectively. The assay time for both tests was less than 5 min, suitable for rapid testing on-site.