Monitoring of pesticide residues in fresh peaches produced under conventional and integrated crop management cultivation

The frequency and severity of crop protection product ( pesticide) contamination of peaches grown conventionally were compared with those of peaches grown by integrated crop management (ICM). The peach samples (n = 150) were collected preharvest ( June - August 2001) from both conventional ( n = 55) and ICM ( n = 95) cultivations from the Pella and Imathia districts of Macedonia, Northern Greece. The residue levels of selected insecticides, fungicides and acaricides in peach samples were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry following solid-phase extraction. The concentrations of all detected pesticides were lower than the maximum residue limits (MRLs) in all peach samples grown with the ICM system (p< 0.001). However, chlorpyrifos residues at levels higher than the MRLs were detected in four peach samples (i.e. 7% of the total samples) grown by the conventional system. Comparing the results for both cultivation methods with the reported average percentage (3.6%) of fruit samples with pesticide residues above the MRLs ( European Union report for Greece in 2001), it was concluded that the initial implementation of the ICM in Greece was successful. The present study indicates that ICM cultivation has a higher efficiency in terms of product safety and quality. Furthermore, the results suggest that the application of conventional cultivation requires continuous monitoring of various crop protection product levels.