Semiautomated Method for In-Line Removal of Matrix Components from Food for the Analysis of Residual Pesticides by LC-MS/MS

In-line sample prep (ILSP) provides a semiautomated cleanup procedure for the analysis of pesticide residues in food by LC-MS/MS. ILSP selectively retains matrix components from the sample extract and can be utilized as a standalone workflow or integrated into an existing QuEChERS workflow. In these experiments, ILSP was applied to multiple challenging commodities representing a wide range of compositions, including soy meal, avocado, whole orange, black tea, and hibiscus tea for the analysis of 61 pesticides. This solution provides a novel, semiautomated approach to reduce the abundance of matrix components entering the analytical column and MS source, resulting in a decrease in instrument contamination and an improvement in data quality. Recoveries were tested at 10 ng/g for each commodity and returned acceptable values (70-120% recovery with %RSD ≤20%) for 98% of pesticides in soy meal, 95% in avocado, 98% in black tea, 82% in hibiscus tea, and 87% in whole orange. The semi-automation of the methodology reduces error, simplifies sample preparation, and increases throughput compared to traditional extraction and cleanup techniques for a streamlined approach for the analysis of pesticide residues in food commodities.