Food scientist and analytical chemist Lili He at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a three-year, $473,628 grant from the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture to study mechanisms of how chemical pesticides, applied both systemically and to the surface, penetrate fresh produce and move into plant tissues, and how this may affect food safety for consumers.
She is an expert in a technique called surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS), which can detect trace amount of compounds in a sample. She has developed an innovative SERS method for studying pesticides on and in fresh produce without mashing up the sample.
Her research will focus on apples, grapes and leaf spinach as representatives of three different skin structures in fruits and vegetables: Apples have a thick skin that can be peeled, grapes have an ultra-thin skin that is usually not peeled and spinach has no skin.