Development and Application of a Multi-Residue Method to Determine Pesticides in Agricultural Water Using QuEChERS Extraction and LC-MS/MS Analysis

Tae-Gyu Lim,Ji Yeon Choi,Nho-Eul Song,Tae Gyu Nam,Minseon Koo,Young Sung Jung,Dong-Ho Seo,Hyo-Kyoung Choi

doi:10.3390/separations7040052

Abstract

Agricultural water is closely linked to surface and ground water as well as soil; hence, ensuring its safety is an important endeavor. We used the “quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe” (QuEChERS) method to analyze multi-residue pesticides in agricultural water by using a combined-sorbent-based clean-up procedure. Among the various sorbents examined, clean-up using ENVI-Carb combined with a primary secondary amine sorbent delivered the highest recovery of multi-residue pesticides (>93.9%). While the developed method showed satisfactory linearity (R2 > 0.9991), precision, and specificity, recovery was low for pyrazolate (29.1%) and thidiazuron (59.2%). The limits of detection and quantification for the 55 pesticides targeted in this study were in 0.02–3.0 μg L−1 and 0.1–9.9 μg L−1, respectively. The developed method was used to identify and quantify multi-residue pesticides during sample analysis. The results suggest that the QuEChERS method employing a combination of ENVI-Carb and another sorbent can be applied for the effective analysis of multi-residue pesticides in agricultural water.

Highlights

Water, an environmental reservoir, has continuously been contaminated by pesticides used for agriculture [1]
The results of this study provide an effective strategy for the analysis of residual pesticides in environmental samples such as agricultural water
The mobile phases used in this study were composed of water and methanol; satisfactory separation and resolution were achieved for all pesticides

Summary

Introduction

An environmental reservoir, has continuously been contaminated by pesticides used for agriculture [1]. Several analytical methods have been developed for the extraction of residual pesticides from agricultural water; liquid-liquid, solid-phase, and solid-liquid extraction methods are typically used to prepare agricultural water samples [4,5,6]. These methods have disadvantages such as the use of large volumes of organic solvents, inefficient clean-up procedures, and long processing times

Methods

Results

Conclusion