A modified QuEChERS/GC–MS for simultaneous determination of 16 pesticide adjuvant residues in fruits and vegetables

A rapid, sensitive, and practical QuEChERS method coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry was developed for the simultaneous determination of 16 chemical adjuvant residues in samples of fruits (apple, nectarine, grape) and vegetables (tomato, cucumber, spinach). All target compounds were separated in less than 16 min. Samples were extracted with acetonitrile, and the types of extraction salt and cleanup sorbent were optimized. The optimized method was validated by evaluating the linearity, accuracy, precision, and matrix effect. The recoveries of the 16 pesticides adjuvants ranged from 61.2 to 116.3% with relative standard deviations lower than 11.6%. Limits of detection ranged from 0.21 to 3.02 μg/kg, and limits of quantification ranged from 0.71 to 10.07 μg/kg. Finally, the developed method was successfully employed to identify and quantify pesticide adjuvant residues in the analysis of 30 real fruit and vegetable samples.