Overview
Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to protect crops and to improve efficiency of production. Pesticide residues may pose a potential threat to human health. Modern analytical techniques, such as QuEChERS extraction followed by LC-MS/MS, allow screening for pesticides in a variety of food matrices.1-3
Here we present a new and powerful workflow to identify, quantify and confirm the presence of 400 pesticides utilizing generic QuEChERS extraction and LC-MS/MS analysis with the AB SCIEX QTRAP® 6500 system using the Scheduled MRM™ Pro algorithm and Information Dependent Acquisition (IDA) of full scan MS/MS spectra. High confidence in identification and confirmation was achieved by automatically calculating the ratio of quantifier and qualifier ions and searching MS/MS spectral libraries in MultiQuant™ and MasterView™ software. Qualitative method performance was verified using guideline SANCO/12571/2013 guideline.4
Introduction
Due to the high usage of pesticides in agriculture, there is a high probability that pesticide residues Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to protect crops and to improve efficiency of production. After application pesticide may remain on agricultural products or accumulate in the environment, posing a potential threat to human health. Consequently, government agencies, food producers and food retailers have the duty to ensure that pesticide residues occurring in food are below established maximum residue limits set by Codex Alimentarius, the European Union, the US EPA, or by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. There is a demand for powerful and rapid analytical methods that can identify pesticides with high confidence in a broad range of food matrices and quantify them at low concentrations with good accuracy and reproducibility. A new analytical workflow was developed to screen for 400 pesticides in fruit, vegetable, tea and spices utilizing generic QuEChERS extraction, UHPLC separation using a core-shell particle column, and MS/MS detection with the AB SCIEX QTRAP® 6500 system. The Scheduled MRM™ Pro algorithm was used to acquire ~800 MRM transitions to accurately quantify target pesticides and identify them based on the characteristic ratio of quantifier and qualifier ions. The Scheduled MRM™ data were also used to automatically acquire full scan MS/MS spectra to allow data to be searched against spectral libraries. The data processing in MultiQuant™ and MasterView™ software was used as a confirmatory tool to enhance confidence in quantitative and qualitative results.
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