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 increasingly important health and environment issue in developing countries where economies may be heavily reliant on agriculture. The conventional approach to monitor these pesticides is to develop highly optimized triple quadrupole MRM methods to achieve the required levels of sensitivity, selectivity and speed of analysis whilst still providing confidence in pesticide identification. In this study LCMS technology, developed for ultra-fast scanning MRM analysis, allows the possibility of a single generic ‘universal’ method. High speed MRM analysis and a generic parameters were used for screening 172 pesticides (344 MRM transitions) with 5 msec dwell and 1 msec pause times in food matrices.