Multi-Residue Method for Determination of 85 Pesticides in Vegetables, Fruits and Green Tea by Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction and Thermal Desorption GC-MS

A multi-residue method to determine five groups of 85 pesticides – chlorinated, carbamate, phosphorous, pyrethroid and others – in vegetables, fruits and green tea has been developed using stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) coupled to thermal desorption and retention time locked (RTL) GC-MS. Pre-extraction with methanol and dilution with water prior to SBSE (60 min) were performed. Dilution of methanol extract for SBSE was examined to obtain high sensitivity and to compensate the effect of adsorption to the glass wall of extraction vessel and to sample matrix for the compounds with high log Ko/w values (e.g. pyrethroid). The methanol extracts were diluted twofold and fivefold, and were simultaneously SBSE-enriched. The two stir bars were placed in a single glass thermal desorption liner and were simultaneously desorbed. The versatility of the method was exhibited by its good linearity (4-100 μg/kg, r2 >0.9900) for 66 pesticides and limit of detection (LOD: < 5 μg/kg) for most of the analytes. The method enables to determine pesticides at low μg/kg in tomato, cucumber, green soybeans, spinach, grape and green tea.