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Increasing awareness of the health and environment impacts of the antibiotics misuse or overuse, such as tetracycline (TC) in treatment or prevention of infections and diseases, has driven the development of robust methods for their detection in biological, environmental and food systems. In this work, we report the development of a new europium(III) complex functionalized silica nanoprobe (SiNPs-Eu 3+ ) for highly sensitive and selective detection of TC residue in aqueous solution and food samples (milk and meat). The nanoprobe is developed by immobilization of Eu 3+ ion onto the surface of silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) as the emitter and TC recognition unit. The β-diketone configuration of TC can further coordinate with Eu 3+ steadily on the surface of nanoprobe, facilitating the absorption of light excitation for Eu 3+ emitter activation and luminescence "off-on" response. The dose-dependent luminescence enhancement of SiNPs-Eu 3+ nanoprobe exhibits good linearities, allowing the quantitative detection of TC. The SiNPs-Eu 3+ nanoprobe shows high sensitivity and selectivity for TC detection in buffer solution. Time resolved luminescence analysis enables the elimination of autofluorescence and light scattering for highly sensitive detection of TC in milk and pork mince with high accuracy and precision. The successful development of SiNPs-Eu 3+ nanoprobe is anticipated to provide a rapid, economic, and robust approach for TC detection in real world samples., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)