Validation Study on a Multi-residue Analysis of Pesticides in Agricultural Products by Using Phosphoric Acid Treatment and GC-MS/MS

A rapid method for multi-residue determination of pesticides in agricultural products was validated. The sample was cut into pieces and placed into a mixer cup containing half weight amount of 10% phosphoric acid in order to suppress degradation of easily degraded pesticides, represented by captan, and then homogenized. Pesticides in the phosphoric acid-treated sample were extracted with acetonitrile using a homogenizer, followed by salting out with anhydrous magnesium sulfate and 'sodium chloride. The extract was cleaned up on a C18 and graphite carbon black/PSA mini-cartridge column. Some pesticides gave tailing peaks, but these peaks became sharp and symmetrical when polyethylene glycol (PEG) 300 was added to the test solution. Recovery tests were performed on nine kinds of agricultural products (brown rice, soybean, spinach, cabbage, potato, orange, apple, strawberry, and Japanese pear) fortified with 170 pesticides at 0.01 and 0.1 mu g/g. Each concentration of pesticide residue was extracted from 2 samples on 5 separate days. The trueness of the method for 147-164 pesticides in each sample was 70-120% with satisfactory repeatability and within-run reproducibility. This method is expected to useful for multi-residue analysis of pesticides in agricultural products.