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Multiresidue Determination of Pesticides in Potato Tuber, Peel, and Pulp by QuEChERS and UHPLC-MS/MS

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Abstract

Pesticides have been widely used to control pests and weeds during food production or storage, but when used incorrectly, they can cause damage to human health and the environment. Thus, this study aimed to develop and validate a multiresidue method for the determination of pesticides in potatoes, as well as to evaluate the concentrations in the peel and pulp of the tuber. The method is based on the original QuEChERS procedure for sample preparation, with a clean-up step by dispersive solid phase extraction (d-SPE) using C18 as sorbent and determination by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). The method was validated for 82 pesticides at the spike levels 10, 25, and 50 µg kg−1 presenting adequate accuracy and precision results. The method is simple and effective, achieving a practical quantification limit of 10 µg kg−1 for most of the pesticides. In order to evaluate the proposed method, it was applied to commercial potato samples, and, subsequently, the distribution of pesticides in the peel and pulp part was evaluated indicating that some pesticides are concentrated in the peel and others in the pulp, depending on the physicochemical properties of the pesticides. The results showed the presence of several pesticides, including some prohibited for potato crops. The method was successfully applied in commercial samples and demonstrated to be effective for routine analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support and fellowships granted by the Brazilian agencies CNPq and CAPES.

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brazil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Pesticide Residues Analysis (LARP), Chemistry Department, Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, 97105-900, Brazil

    Leonardo Rabello Amaral, Cleusa Fátima Zanchin, Luana Floriano, Karina Ues, Osmar Damian Prestes & Renato Zanella

Authors
  1. Leonardo Rabello Amaral
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  2. Cleusa Fátima Zanchin
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  3. Luana Floriano
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  4. Karina Ues
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  5. Osmar Damian Prestes
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  6. Renato Zanella
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Contributions

Leonardo Rabello Amaral, Cleusa Fátima Zanchin and Luana Flores did the practical work and wrote the main manuscript. Karina Ues participated in the execution of the experimental work. Osmar D. Prestes and Renato Zanella coordinated the work. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Renato Zanella.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of Interest

Leonardo Rabello Amaral declares that he has no conflict of interest. Cleusa Fátima Zanchin declares that she has no conflict of interest. Luana Flores declares that she has no conflict of interest. Karina Ues declares that she has no conflict of interest. Osmar D. Prestes declares that he has no conflict of interest. Renato Zanella declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Amaral, L.R., Zanchin, C.F., Floriano, L. et al. Multiresidue Determination of Pesticides in Potato Tuber, Peel, and Pulp by QuEChERS and UHPLC-MS/MS. Food Anal. Methods 16, 771–780 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-023-02471-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-023-02471-y

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