Food Research Institute

Tong, K. X. – Wu, X. Q. – Zhang, Z. J. - Xie, Y. J. – Chen, H. – Fan, C. L.
Degradation of pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables studied using high-performance liquid chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry
Journal of Food and Nutrition Research, 61, 2022, No. 2, s. 156-168

Hui Chen, Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine, No. 11 Ronghua South Road, Daxing District, Beijing 100176, China. E-mail: ciqhuichen@163.com

Received 15 July 2021; 1st revised 17 December 2021; 2nd revised 28 January 2022; accepted 21 February 2022; published online 5 May 2022.

The online version of this article contains supplementary data.

Summary: In this paper, we report the degradation of 47 pesticides in apple, grape, cabbage and tomato within 77 days under freezing frozen conditions (–18 °C). Pesticides were analysed by liquid chromatography – quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS). Recovery studies of the pesticides were conducted at limit of quantification (LOQ) level with 5 replicates in the four matrices. They were all in the range of 70–120 % and the relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 25 %, which indicated acceptable reliability and quantitative accuracy of the proposed method. Spiked samples were prepared at 50 μg·kg^-1 and 200 μg·kg^-1 and stored at –18 °C. The degradation curve of these pesticides was drawn based on the summarized results, their degradation rules was logarithmic, polynomial or exponential. The degradation rates in apples and tomatoes were relatively stable with half-lives of 6.8–30.1 days. Most of the pesticides vanished rapidly within 14 days in cabbage and grape. The degradation rule in this work could provide an important reference for risk assessment and measurement accuracy for regulatory agencies.

Keywords: time-of-flight mass spectrometry; pesticide residue; degradation; agricultural product

Download:
  (pdf, 464.26 Kb, 1655x)
  (pdf, 192.05 Kb, 1696x)