As agricultural trade grows and food safety concerns mount, stricter pesticide regulations are being enforced around the world. Increased pesticide testing and reductions in maximum permissible residue levels have driven demand for fast, sensitive and cost-effective analytical methods for high-throughput screening of multi-class pesticides in food. Detection of 510 pesticides at low ppb levels was achieved within 12 minutes using the Thermo Scientific Exactive benchtop LC/MS system powered by Orbitrap technology.

Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to protect crops and to improve efficiency of production. Consequently, governments, food producers and food retailers have the duty to ensure that any residues occurring in foods for human consumption are at or below Statutory Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs). Regulation EC 396/2005 adopted in the European Union sets MRLs for more than 500 different pesticides in over 300 different food commodities. We describe a method providing high quality and low level analysis of pesticides in produce samples using the TSQ Quantum XLS Ultra GC-MS/MS system.

Traditionally, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methods for drinking water analysis have required offline SPE to concentrate analytes to a level that can be detected using LC-MS instrumentation. This process requires the collection of large volumes of sample, typically between 250 and 1000 mL. We developed a method to assist in the validation of a new EPA method for the analysis of organic pesticides in drinking water. This method utilizes 1~2 mL injections for online preconcentration and eliminates offline solid phase extraction (SPE).

Pesticides are used throughout the world to control pests that are harmful to crops, animals, or people. Because of the danger of pesticides to human health and the environment, regulatory agencies control their use and set pesticide residue tolerance levels. We demonstrate the use of Fast-HPLC and a large volume injection to analyze sub-ppb concentrations of regulated pesticides in drinking water samples.

We describe a method to analyze large numbers of pesticides in a single run on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer using TraceFinder software with built-in workflows for streamlining method development and routine analysis.