scope:

This Technical Report lists mass spectrometric parameters which are useful for the application of European Standards for the determination of pesticide residues in foods of plant origin that use LC-MS/MS, such as the standards in preparation: prEN 15637 "Foods of plant origin - Determination of pesticide residues using LC-MS/MS following methanol extraction and clean up using diatomaceous earth" prEN 15662 "Foods of plant origin - Determination of pesticide residues using GC-MS and/or LC-MS/MS following acetonitrile extraction/partitioning by dispersive SPE - QuEChERS-method" To facilitate the determination of active substances and/or metabolites using LC-MS/MS, Table 1 specifies the precursor ions and product ions suitable for quantification, which can be used independently of the type of triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. However, using an ion trap mass spectrometer other product ions can be generated or at least the relative intensities of the ions are different to triple quadrupole instruments. Furthermore, the additional parameters declustering potential (DP), collision energy (CE), relative retention times and an approximate classification of detection sensitivity are presented in Table 1. These were derived using the API 20001) and should be applicable at least for other instruments of the API type (Applied Biosystems).