DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTIRESIDUE METHOD FOR NITROGEN-CONTAINING PESTICIDES .1. PRELIMINARY-RESULTS

A great number of commonly used pesticides contain nitrogen and many of these compounds are amendable to gas chromatography with nitrogen-specific detection. Nitrogen-containing pesticides have however poorly been investigated in comparison to the halogen- or phosphorus-containing pesticides as regarded their possible combination in, preferably, a Multiresidue Method (MRM). In the study presented here, a start is made for a systematic approach to the multiresidue analysis of nitrogen-containing pesticides in foodstuffs. An inventory has been made of the target group of compounds and the gaschromatographic behaviour of approx. 20 nitrogen-containing fungicides has been studied, as well as their behaviour in some commonly used extraction and clean-up procedures. Results for the determination of 15 fungicides in cucumber analysed by a modification of MRM 7 of the dutch manual are described. In the near future the method will be extended for the application to other matrices and to approximately 40 nitrogen-containing herbicides.