"Is there anybody else out there?" – First Insights from a Suspect Screening for Phytotoxins in Surface Water

Abstract

To protect themselves, plants can produce toxic secondary metabolites (phytotoxins) that appear with widely varying structures and negative effects. These phytotoxins often show similar properties as known aquatic micropollutants in terms of mobility, persistence, toxicity, and possibly also ecotoxicity. However, their occurrence in surface waters remains largely unknown, which is also due to unknown ability of available screening approaches to detect them. Therefore, we performed a target and suspect screening based on a persistence-mobility prioritization for phytotoxins in small Swiss creeks using high resolution mass spectrometry. In total, three of 26 targets were detected, three of 78 suspects tentatively identified, and six suspects fully confirmed by reference standards. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that three different plant secondary metabolite classes are detected in the same surface water sample. Estrogenic isoflavones were detected at 73% of the sites with formononetin as main toxin, which is in agreement with previous studies. Furthermore, pyrrolizidine alkaloids and the indole alkaloid gramine were detected. Especially pyrrolizidine alkaloids might be critical due to their production by various plants including the invasive Senecio inaequidens, and their known importance in food and feed safety. Based on these first screening results, different phytotoxin classes should be assessed for their ecotoxicological effects and considered in future water monitoring.