A study of plant growth regulators detection based on terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and density functional theory

Terahertz technology is receiving increasing attention for its use as an efficient non-destructive, non-contact and label-free optical method for qualitative and quantitative detection. The aim of this study was to develop a chemical analysis methodology based on terahertz time-domain spectra that could be used to detect plant growth regulators, such as glyphosine, naphthaleneacetic acid, daminozide and gibberellic acid. The THz fingerprint spectra of these four PGRs were located in the 0.3–1.8 THz, with the peaks of glyphosine at 0.32, 0.49, 0.74, 0.87, 0.96, and 1.49 THz; daminozide at 0.33, 0.39, 0.55, 0.67, and 1.17 THz; gibberellic acid at 0.46, 0.58, 0.92, and 1.38 THz and naphthaleneacetic acid at 0.43, 0.57, 0.73, and 0.90 THz. The results showed that these four plant growth regulators exhibited numerous distinct spectral features in frequency-dependent absorption spectra, which demonstrated the qualitative capacity of terahertz time-domain. The origin of the observed terahertz absorption peaks of these four plant growth regulators was determined through density functional theory calculations and analysis of absorption spectra. Discriminant analysis method was used to evaluate the classification trends of the four plant growth regulators based on their THz absorbance spectra. Generally, this study provides a reference for the rapid detection of plant growth regulators in fruits and vegetables by using terahertz spectroscopy technology.