Zicheng Yang and Louis Maljers Screening and Quantitation of About 200 Pesticides in Honey by an Integrated On-Line Extraction UHPLC-MS/MS System

Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) is widely used for sample clean up before LC-MS/MS analysis. It is costly and time consuming. Here we present a simple, cost effective and sensitive procedure for screening and quantitation of pesticides in honey using an integrated On-Line Extraction (OLE)-UHPLC-MS/MS system for analysis of pesticides in honey. A study using the EVOQ analyzed about 200 pesticides in honey using only one method with positive negative switching for 430 MRM transitions. The measurements were conducted by dilute-and-shoot without sample enrichment. The honey was diluted 10-fold and filtered before injection. An YMC-Pack ODS-AQ, 10 µm, 10 mm x 2 mm (I.D.) column was used as trap column. An aqueous mobile phase was used to retain the pesticides on the trap column and to elute the monosaccharides in the honey out to the waste and then the valve switched to couple the trap column with analytical column for separation and detection. The linear range was about 1 to 1000 ng/g and the linear regression coefficiency R² was >0.99.