Determination of strobilurin fungicides in fruits and their mass fragmentation routes by ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

A method was developed for the simultaneous determination of six strobilurin fungicide (E-metominostrobin, azoxystrobin, kresoxim-methyl, picoxystrobin, pyraclostrobin and trifloxystrobin) residues in orange, banana, apple and pineapple samples by ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The fragmentation routes of all the compounds were explained by the aid of a fragment predicting software ACD Lab/MS Fragmenter. The samples were extracted by acetonitrile, then cleaned up by amino solid phase extraction cartridges (SupelClean LC-NH2). The extracts were separated on a ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (50 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) with gradient elution. Acetonitrile containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid and 10 mmol/L ammonium acetate containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid were used as mobile phases. The samples were detected by electrospray ionization (ESI)-MS/MS in positive ion and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, quantified by external standard method. Good linearities were obtained in the range of 5-100 μg/L (for pyraclostrobin, 1-20 μg/L) with correlation coefficients (r2) greater than 0.999. The recoveries ranged from 60.4% to 120% with the relative standard deviations between 2.15% and 15.1% (n=6). The developed method can meet the inspection of the six strobilurin residues in the orange, banana, apple and pineapple samples.