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From soils to edible tissues: Critical assessment of techniques for detecting micro- and nanoplastics in agroecosystems
Summary
This review evaluates analytical techniques for detecting micro- and nanoplastics across the agricultural soil-plant-food pathway, from field sampling through polymer identification. The authors critically assess detection limits, recovery biases, and method suitability for complex agricultural matrices at each stage of the food production chain. The study highlights that standardized, validated methods are urgently needed to reliably track plastic contamination from farm soils into edible plant tissues.
The rapid accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) in agricultural landscapes has raised urgent questions about their fate in soils, their transfer to plants, and their eventual entry into human diets. While early reviews of MNPs in food matrices, soils, and plants provided important foundations, most treated these compartments separately and rarely aligned analytical evidence across the soil-plant-edible tissue continuum. This review synthesizes current knowledge along the agricultural soil-plant-food pathway, with emphasis on analytical workflows such as sampling, pretreatment, spectroscopic imaging, and thermoanalytical and mass-spectrometric quantification. We critically evaluate detection limits, recovery biases, and the suitability of these methods for complex agricultural matrices, while also highlighting emerging computational tools for particle recognition, automated spectral deconvolution, and improved mass-balance closure. Persistent challenges involving sub-50 µm fractions, nanoscale particles, and environmentally realistic concentrations are discussed. While earlier essential studies are included for context, the focus is on recent literature that captures the rapid evolution of analytical capabilities from 2020 to 2025. Linking field surveys, controlled uptake studies, and exposure modelling shows how harmonized protocols and improved QA/QC can strengthen dietary risk assessment. The review concludes by identifying methodological gaps and introducing recent advances in analytical determination, including advanced imaging techniques such as confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLMS) or photo-induced force microscopy (PiFM), thermoanalytical MS (e.g., pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), thermal extraction and desorption (TED)-GC/MS and fast-MS platforms), and imaging-enhanced Raman/Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), together with novel data analysis workflows that now warrant an integrated appraisal focused on agroecosystems. Keywords