Simultaneous determination of seven insecticides in soft drinks and fruit juices using ultraperformance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry with product ion confirmation scan mode

Abstract

An analytical method for the simultaneous determination of seven insecticides, including six neonicotinoids and one pyridine-azomethine, in drinks by LC-MS/MS using the Product Ion Confirmation Scan (PICS) mode was developed and validated. The compounds were extracted by modified QuEChERS and purified by d-SPE. The separation of all compounds was achieved in less than 3 minutes using a BEH C18 reverse-phase column and a mobile phase composed of 0.01% formic acid in water and methanol in the gradient elution mode at 0.4 mL min⁻¹. Except for the two transitions and retention time demanded by EU/2002, identification was further carried out by matching the mass spectrum between the reference and sample produced by PICS if necessary. The LODs and LOQs for all compounds were lower than 0.014 μg L⁻¹ and 0.05 μg L⁻¹, respectively. The calibration curves were ranging from the LOQ to 0.02 mg L⁻¹ with r² higher than 0.9917 and reasonable recoveries were between 81.19% and 105.79% with RSD <15.0%. This work illustrates the advantages of using the PICS mode to build MRM acquisition methods in the application field of pesticide multi-residue analysis. It is very effective when only one MRM transition is obtained or the confirmation ion transition is too weak. It is proved that this is a rapid and reliable analytical method.