Abstract
ABSTRACTHerein, a QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) procedure together with liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry was applied to the multi-residue analysis of 203 pesticides in strawberries. To reduce the amount of co-eluents, we compared several dispersive solid-phase extraction cleanup procedures and found that cleanup using octadecylsilane provided the best recoveries. Spiked-sample recoveries of 70–120% with relative standard deviations of <20% were obtained for all tested pesticides except for quinmerac. Matrix-matched calibration curves exhibited good linearities (R2 > 0.99), and the limits of quantification (LOQs) were lower than the maximum residue limits recommended by the European Commission and Korea Food and Drug Administration. The developed method was applied to real samples, revealing that their pesticide contents exceeded the corresponding LOQs. The obtained results demonstrate that octadecylsilane-based dispersive solid-phase extraction is a rapid and high-throughput cleanup procedure for the multi-residue analysis of pesticides in strawberries.
Highlights
The high nutritional value of fruits makes them important food components (Ruiz-Torralba, Guerra-Hernández, & García-Villanova, 2018); fruits can be dietary sources of toxic substances such as pesticides
A QuEChERS procedure together with liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry was applied to the multi-residue analysis of 203 pesticides in strawberries
Optimization of mobile phase composition is important for the analysis of trace amounts of analytes by liquid chromatography (LC)-MS, as it leads to satisfactory sensitivity and good ionization
Summary
The high nutritional value of fruits makes them important food components (Ruiz-Torralba, Guerra-Hernández, & García-Villanova, 2018); fruits can be dietary sources of toxic substances such as pesticides. Pesticide residues are frequently detected in strawberries, which are very popular agricultural raw materials (Sharma, Nagpal, Pakade, & Katnoria, 2010). The increasing public concern over the potential health risks posed by pesticide residues in food has strengthened the management of agricultural products for improved food quality and safety. To ensure food-supply safety, maximum residue limits (MRLs, expressed in mg kg−1) have been established to regulate the use of pesticides (European Commission, 2019; KFDA, 2019). In Korea, MRLs have been set for most pesticides in a variety of animal-origin and agricultural products, and a uniform value of
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