Targeted screening and quantitation of pesticide residues in green tea using a Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer

With population growth and the development of agriculture and food industries, food safety is becoming a greater concern in recent years. The increasingly stricter regulations of residual food contaminants requires faster and more accurate analytic techniques. For this purpose, targeted screening by simultaneous MRM measurements using a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer is the most common strategy. Data acquisition using a high-resolution and accurate mass spectrometer (HRMS), such as a Time-of-Flight, is also carried out coupled with MRM-based analysis for the purpose of guaranteeing the robustness and reliability of screening. In addition, HRMS also provides a different advantage from MRM measurement because a compound which was not included as a target when acquiring data can be processed later without reacquiring data.