Hapten synthesis, monoclonal antibody generation, and development of competitive immunoassays for the analysis of picoxystrobin in beer

This paper describes the original synthesis of a functionalized derivative of the fungicide picoxystrobin and the generation of the first reported monoclonal antibodies against this strobilurin pesticide. The synthetic hapten was prepared by total synthesis from commercial chemicals and incorporating the spacer arm through a carbon–carbon single bond. Also, to obtain the immunogen, an uncommon hapten activation strategy based on N,N′-disuccinimidyl carbonate was employed, affording high activation yields and clean and reproducible coupling results. With these immunoreagents, two enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) were developed: a competitive one-step assay using the antibody-coated direct ELISA format and a competitive two-step assay with the conjugate-coated indirect ELISA procedure. Both immunoassays were characterized in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, tolerance to solvents and matrix effects, achieving limits of detection below 0.2 μg L−1. The optimized assays were used for the determination of picoxystrobin residues in beer, with recovery values ranging between 90 and 121% for the direct assay and from 79 to 122% for the indirect assay.