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DeVries Reflects on Four Decades of Breakthroughs and Challenges in Food Analyses for Standard Deviation and Detection Limits” 123rd AOAC Annual Meeting and Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA September 13-16, 2009 This year’s Wiley Award winner, Jonathan DeVries, Medallion Laboratories/General Mills, will provide a 40-year perspective on breakthroughs and challenges for analytical scientists performing analyses in food nutrition, safety, and quality. From chromatography (primarily thin layer, glass column, and gas-liquid) to space age technology, DeVries examines how techniques, equipment, and detection capabilities have advanced, yet improvements in precision have not kept pace. Indeed, the past four decades have been exciting and challenging for chemists performing analyses in food nutrition, safety, and quality. The era began with the primary tools being balances (literally), beakers, burners, pipets, burets, and test tubes. Chromatography was primarily thin layer, glass column, and gas-liquid, occasionally coupled to a mass spectrometer via jet separator. Detection limits were in the percentage or tenths of a percent range for wet chemistry, and perhaps the low parts per million for gas chromatography. Space age technology in the subsequent 40 years has brought a spectacular array of capabilities to the food analyst, enabling routine detection and quantitation to analyte levels of parts per billion, parts per trillion, and, in some cases, parts per quadrillion. These capabilities allow better understanding of the factors impacting the nutrition, quality, and safety of the food supply, allowing the detection and characterization of undiscovered low-level components. But discovery of new analytes has resulted in some analytical challenges. As technology has attained lower limits of detection, improved levels of precision have not been attained. In fact, in many cases, the methods incorporating advanced analytical technologies exhibit poorer precision than their predecessor methods. AOAC INTERNATIONAL continues to play a lead role, ensuring confidence in analytical results throughout the technological changes. DeVries is currently a Senior Principal Scientist at General Mills serving as Senior Technical Manager for the Medallion Laboratories division. He recently completed a term as president of AOAC, is a Fellow of AOAC, and currently serves as the Association’s treasurer. He has been instrumental in validation of Official MethodsSM for dietary fiber and its components, as well as for fats and fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin E, and several water-soluble vitamins using automated methodologies. DeVries received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, minor in Mathematics, from Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, minors in Physical Chemistry and Biochemistry, from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Don’t miss this year’s Wiley Award Address at the 123rd AOAC Annual Meeting and Exposition, September 13-14, 2008, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
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