The Application of Supercritical Fluid Chromatography in Food Quality and Food Safety: An Overview

Recently, supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has attracted considerable attention for their application in food analysis. The use of supercritical CO2 (SC–CO2), as a mobile phase for SFC, with its low viscosity and high molecular diffusiveness, results in shorter analysis time and lower consumption of organic solvents as compared to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In addition, with recent improvements in its detection system, SFC has shown satisfactory selectivity and sensitivity. Thus, although the composition of food is complex, SFC remains a powerful tool in food analysis with some simple sample pretreatment techniques, such as liquid–liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction, and QuEChERS. Here, we summarize the applications of SFC in food quality and safety from 2012 to 2018, and mainly focus on sample pretreatment strategies and analysis conditions.