Exploring the application of a universal method for pesticide screening in foods using a high data acquisition speed MS/MS

Effective management, use, and disposal of agrochemicals, particularly pesticides, is an increasing important health and environment issue in developing countries where economies may be heavily reliant on agriculture. The conventional approach is to develop highly optimized triple quad MRM methods to achieve the required levels of sensitivity and selectivity whilst still providing confidence in pesticide identification. The technology developed for fast scanning MRM analysis creates the advantage of developing multi-screening approaches for environmental target analysis and allows the possibility of a single generic 'universal' method.
In this present study, high speed MRM analysis and a generic parameter set were used for screening 176 pesticides (352 SRM transitions) with 5msec dwell and 1msec pause times in different food matrices.