The overuse of glyphosate (Gly), a nonselective and broad-spectrum herbicide widely used to control weeds in grain crops, has induced issues, such as contamination of surface water, decreased soil fertility, adverse effects on soil microbiota and possible incorporation in food chains. The maximum residue thresholds of Gly are established at the very low concentration, especially for drinking water (0.1 μg/L or 0.6 nM, in European countries), therefore there is an urgent need for sensitive and selective monitoring methods.

The proposed project (GLYSens) will develop and validate a sensitive, selective and fast responsive sensor based on shear horizontal (SH) Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) device for the detection of Gly from water samples (collected from the basin of Olt River, the most impacted region in Romania). The high sensitivity of the sensor will be assured by both design and piezoelectric substrate, together with the guiding layer (SiO2, polymer or ZnO), while the selectivity will be provided by using thin layers of molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs), generally considered as artificial mimics that are comparable to the natural receptor, providing more stable and low-cost recognition elements. Since the water samples are very complex matrices, the selectivity study is a must and for this, GLYSens will investigate several possible interfering species, such as different herbicides, organic contaminants or metal ions, known to coexist in the water matrix. Also, more than 50 water samples will be analyzed using the developed MIP-SAW sensor, and for the validation of the method, the obtained results will be compared with the results obtained from one standard method (Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography- Mass Spectrometry).