Simultaneous determination of 103 pesticide residues in tea samples by LC-MS/MS

A simple and sensitive method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of 103 pesticide residues in tea by LC-MS/MS. For the analysis of the pesticide with polarity, thermal lability or low volatility, this LC-MS/MS method has an advantage over GC. In this work, residual pesticides were extracted from the tea sample with ACN and then purified using Carb-NH2 SPE cartridges. Using the multiple reaction monitoring mode, the pesticides were quantified and identified by the most abundant and characteristic fragment ions. The recoveries obtained for each pesticide ranged between 65 and 114% at three spiked concentration levels. The intra-day precisions were lower than 19.6%. Good linear relationships were observed with the correlation coefficients r(2) >0.996 for all analytes. The established method was successfully applied to the determination of pesticide residues in real tea samples.