An effective method for pesticide residues determination in tobacco by GC-MS/MS and UHPLC-MS/MS employing acetonitrile extraction with low-temperature precipitation and d-SPE clean-up.

An effective method has been developed and validated for the determination of residues of 55 pesticides in tobacco. The proposed sample preparation method is based on acetonitrile extraction, low-temperature precipitation (LTP) and dispersive solid phase extraction (d-SPE) clean-up. Gas chromatography and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography analysis, both coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS and UHPLC-MS/MS), were used for determination. LTP is easy to perform and was crucial to obtain a clean extract. Method quantification limit for the pesticides were between 25 and 75µgkg-1. Extraction recoveries obtained for blank samples spiked at 25, 75, 125 and 250µgkg-1 levels ranged from 63 to 161% with relative standard deviations (RSD)≤20%. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of thirteen different tobacco samples, providing to be a robust procedure for routine analysis. The compounds pirimiphos methyl and isofenphos presented residues in the range of 35-51µgkg-1.