Residue behaviors, degradation, processing factors, and risk assessment of pesticides in citrus from field to product processing

Abstract

Pesticide residues in citrus may cause health risks in related juice products, and bring much uncertainty during the processing procedures. In this study, based on the dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE) and UPLC–MS/MS, the residual levels of ten analytes in citrus and its processed products were monitored. The results showed that dissipation of the pesticides followed the first-order kinetics and the half-lives in citrus varied greatly, ranging from 6.36 to 63.0 days. The terminal residues of the five pesticides at harvest time were <0.01–0.302 and <0.01–0.124 mg/kg in raw citrus and citrus flesh, respectively, all of which were lower than the corresponding maximum residue limits (MRLs) of 0.5–1 mg/kg. In the processing experiments, the residues of ten analytes in sterilized juice, concentrated juice, and citrus essential oil were in the range of <0.01 to 0.442 mg/kg, <0.01 to 1.16 mg/kg, and <0.01 to 44.0 mg/kg, respectively, and the corresponding processing factors (PFs) were 0.127–1.00, 0.023–3.06, and 0.006–39.2. Particularly, in citrus essential oil, the PFs of etoxazole, fluazinam, lufenuron and spirotetramat-keto-hydroxy were 1.68–39.2, exhibiting obvious enrichment effects. By integrating the residue data of the field trials and the PFs, the acute and chronic dietary risks of the target pesticides in citrus juice were 0.031–1.83 % and 0.002–2.51 %, respectively, which were far lower than 100 %, demonstrating no unacceptable risk to human health. This work provides basic data for the establishment of the MRLs and dietary exposure risk assessment for processed citrus products.