Chemometrics Approach to QuEChERS-dSPE for Multi-Standard Determination of Pesticides in Blank Samples of Milli-Q-Water Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)

Abstract

The development of the best efficient technique for multi-pesticide determination in food samples is one of the best ways to address issues concerned with the use of pesticides in agricultural practices. Even though, several conventional techniques have been used earlier such as solid-phase extraction (SPE) and liquid phase microextraction (LPME), unfortunately, these treatment techniques possess poor sensitivity towards targeted analytes due to lack of modifications and optimization which provides an optimum condition for the analyses. In the present work however, chemometrics (multivariate) approach was used as response surface methodology (RSM) for optimising significant factors of quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS) with the dispersive solid phase extraction (dSPE) technique. The Blanket-Burman (screening) and Box-Behnken (optimising) design generated by Minitab statistical software were used for the screening and optimisation of significant factors, respectively as well as quantification using total chromatographic peak areas (TCPA) responses of high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry instrument. Eventually, the acquired average TCPA recovery (56%) for the RSM optimized QuEChERS-dSPE technique was favoured over that of default technique (44%) after comparative studies. This justifies the validity of the optimized method to play an important role in the determination of multi-pesticide residues in water and other food samples with higher matrix interferences.

Keywords: Chromatographic peak areas, Chemometrics RSM, LC-MS, Pesticide analytes, QuEChERS-dSPE