In recent years, Nanita et al. of DuPont greatly increased sample throughput in pesticide residue analysis of foods and other matrices by using flow injection analysis in electrospray ionization � tandem mass spectrometry (FIA-ESI/MS-MS). They used the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method for sample preparation, but had to modify the initial salting-out step because sodium chloride in the original version, or sodium acetate in the buffered version, did not volatilize, which posed problems in the analysis. Instead, they found that the more volatile salt, ammonium chloride, worked better in FIA-ESI/MS-MS, and still gave high recoveries for the pesticides of interest to DuPont. However, this modified QuEChERS version was not evaluated for a wider scope of diverse pesticides commonly monitored worldwide by gas and liquid chromatographic (GC and LC) methods. In this study, we validated the modified QuEChERS version using ammonium chloride for salting-out of 30 diverse representative pesticides using both GC/MS-MS and LC/MS-MS for analysis of fruits and vegetables.

Validation of a modified QuEChERS version for high-throughput analysis of a wide range of pesticides in foods

246th National Meeting (2013)

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