Development of Antibodies and Immunoassays for Carbamate Pesticides

Carbamate chemicals are N-substituted esters of the organic compound carbamic acid, which are widely used in the agrochemical industry as pesticides. Most carbamate pesticides are potentially hazardous for human health and thus their levels in food and the environment should be carefully monitored. Detection and quantification of carbamates are conventionally performed by high-performance liquid chromatography or gas chromatography, combined with mass spectrometry; even though these techniques are specific and sensitive, they often use laborious sample pre-treatment and time-consuming protocols while they require expensive instrumentation and highly trained personnel. Thus, during the last decades several research papers have reported on the development of immunoassays and/or immunosensor devices that aim at the simple, rapid, high-throughput and, if possible, on-site analysis of various carbamate pesticides in environmental, crop and food samples. This review summarizes the current status of the immunoanalytical techniques reported so far for carbamate pesticides, namely carbaryl, carbofuran, methiocarb, metolcarb, propoxur (N-methyl carbamates), chlorpropham (N-phenyl carbamate), and carbendazim (benzimidazole-type carbamate); since the above pesticides are substances of low molecular weight, special emphasis has been put on the synthetic hapten derivatives (bearing mostly a carboxyl-group) of the parental pesticide, the hapten-conjugates used for animal immunization and the anti-hapten antibodies raised, on which the carbamate immunoassays/ immunosensors are based. Keywords: Carbamate pesticides, carbamate-haptens, carboxyl-group, anti-carbamate antibodies, carbamate immunoassays/immunosensors, hapten-conjugates.