Introduction
Our pets’ diet should provide essential nutrients in the correct quantities to ensure their proper nutrition. These nutrients include vitamins, essential fatty acids, proteins, amino acids, and minerals, all of which support a pet’s wellbeing, keeping them happy and healthy. Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) is generally favored in a multi-element analytical environment with detection capabilities appropriate for nutritional analysis, also offering a wide dynamic range, rapid multi-element throughput, and robust operating conditions.
This work demonstrates the ability of the Avio® 220 Max hybrid simultaneous ICP-OES to reliably and effectively analyze a variety of pet food samples, while also providing the benefits of low argon consumption and rapid analysis times. The combination of the MPS 320™ microwave digestion system for sample preparation, the TGA 8000 for percent moisture determination, and the Avio 220 Max ICP-OES for analysis is an ideal suite of instrumentation for fast, simple, cost effective, and accurate analyses of minerals and macronutrients in pet food, and a complete solution only available from PerkinElmer.