A Novel Sample Preparation Approach to Increase the Throughput of Pesticide Analysis by LC-MS-MS

The high-throughput analysis of pesticides in raw agricultural commodities has been hindered by the slow and laborious sample preparation stages. Using traditional clean-up procedures, as many as 20 steps are required to get the sample in a convenient form for analysis, which typically limits sample throughput to eight samples per day. This study evaluates a new approach using a novel laboratory mill and pulverizer to extract various pesticide residues from different kinds of plant materials and to identify and quantitate the active ingredients by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS). It shows that by automating the procedure, the number of clean-up steps can be reduced significantly, which increases sample throughput over traditional approaches.