Determination of 198 pesticide residues in eggplant using Gas Chromatography tandem Mass Spectrometry/Mass Spectrometry

The number of relevant pesticides grows yearly, and has reached hundreds of compounds. Multi-residue simultaneous analysis of hundreds of pesticides in agricultural products is always a challenge. And as required detection limits for many pesticides fall to 10μg/kg (10ppb), more sophisticated analytical tools are demanded.Due to its excellent sensitivity and selectivity, GC-MS/MS with MRM acquisition mode is utilized for the analysis of residual pesticides in foods. The aim of this work was the development and validation for the fast method of the simultaneous analysis of 198 pesticides in eggplant using gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) acquisition mode. The samples were pretreated with the QuEChERS method. The treated samples were then subjected to MRM analysis for 198 pesticides using GC-MS/MS, every compound has 2 MRM transitions (primary for quantification, secondary for qualification), totally 396 transitions in 38 minutes. The established method was sensitive, repeatable and reliable for simultaneous analysis of the 198 pesticides in eggplant samples.