Pesticide residues on field-sprayed apricots and in apricot drying processes

The disappearance of bitertanol, diazinon, iprodione, phosalone, and procymidone on field-sprayed apricots and their fate during sunlight- and oven-drying processes were studied. After treatments in the field, diazinon disappeared completely after a week, whereas the other pesticides at preharvest time showed residues 50% below MRLs. The pesticides decreased with pseudo-first-order kinetics and half-lives ranging from 9.1 to 24.4 days. The sunlight- and oven-drying processes caused the fruit to concentrate by a factor of similar to 6 times. Nevertheless, the pesticide residues present in the dried fruit were lower than in the fresh fruit. The residue decreases were higher in the sunlight process than in the oven process. In the former, on average, the residues on the dried fruits were about half those on the fresh fruits, whereas in the latter they were about equal.