Abstract
Pecan nut is a crop of growing economic importance with a worldwide production around 124,000 tons during the 2017/2018 harvest. Thus, a simple and fast method for the determination of pesticide residues in this crop based on a QuEChERS sample preparation procedure and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis was developed and validated. Despite the complexity of this matrix, with high fat content, the method was suitable to analyze 47 compounds in pecan nuts employing original QuEChERS salts and clean-up with the sorbents PSA and C18. This combination showed best results for lipid removal and compound recoveries when compared with the sorbents Z-Sep+, EMR-Lipid®, chitosan, diatomaceous earth, silica, and Florisil®. Validation was performed according to SANTE guideline using blank samples spiked at 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 μg kg−1, and the proposed method presented satisfactory results with recoveries for most of the pesticides in the range of 70–120% with RSD < 20% and practical limits of quantification from 5 to 10 μg kg−1 for all compounds. The method was successfully applied in real samples and demonstrated to be simple, robust, and effective to be applied in routine analysis.
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