Multi-class pesticide determination in royal jelly by gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

A solid phase extraction procedure based on the use of C₁₈ cartridges has been developed and validated for the extraction of 127 pesticides from royal jelly. Ethyl acetate and n-hexane were used for pesticide elution. Pesticide determination and quantification were performed with gas chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry using selective reaction monitoring. The total run time was 23 min. Because of matrix effects, pesticides were quantified using matrix-matched calibration. Recoveries ranged from 70 to 120% and the relative standard deviation was lower than 20% (intraday) and 25% (interday) for 10, 50 and 100 μg kg⁻¹ of most of the target compounds. The limits of quantification were lower than 10 μg kg⁻¹. The validated method was applied to the analysis of 6 royal jelly commercial products (liquid and capsule preparations) and no pesticides were detected above the limits of detection.