Determination of Avermectins Residues in Soybean, Bean, and Maize Using a QuEChERS-Based Method and Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Soybean, maize, and bean are crops of great economic importance, but in recent years have suffered with infestations of the caterpillar Helicoverpa armigera, with the main reason being the resistance of this pest to most pesticides. Avermectin emamectin benzoate was recently released to control this pest. Other avermectins, like abamectin, doramectin, eprinomectin, and ivermectin are used in large scale because they potent acaricidal, anthelmintic, and insecticidal activities. Thus, a simple and fast method for the determination of avermectins in these crops based on a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) extraction procedure and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) analysis was developed and validated. For extraction, water followed by acetonitrile:isopropanol and a partition step with salts was stablished. With the clean-up step using activated EMR-Lipid, limits of detection of 1.2 μg kg−1 for abamectin, doramectin, emamectin benzoate, and ivermectin, and of 2.4 μg kg−1 for eprinomectin were achieved. The validation showed satisfactory results and the method was successfully applied to commercial samples, indicating that it is suitable for routine analysis.

Critical Evaluation of Two Qualitative Analytical Approaches for Multiclass Determination of Veterinary Drugs in Bovine Muscle Using UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap: The Wind of Change in Brazilian Monitoring

“…For these authors, the reconstitution only in an acid solution of water/acetonitrile led to reduced signals, due to the unsatisfactory ionization of the molecules under the adopted conditions. The studies of Uczay et al [ 37 ] showed that among avermectins, abamectin, and eprinomectin had lower sensitivity through the UHPLC-MS/MS analysis.…”

An LC–MS/MS Method for the Simultaneous Analysis of 380 Pesticides in Soybeans, Kidney Beans, Black Soybeans, and Mung Beans: The Effect of Bean Grinding on Incurred Residues and Partitioning

“…Although several studies have described analytical methods for pesticides in soybeans, only a few have described analytical methods for multi-pesticide residues in kidney, black soybean, and mung beans. Table 1 shows published studies [6,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] on multi-residue sample preparation methods for soybeans. Pesticide analysis involves four main steps: sample grinding, extraction, partitioning, and clean-up [7,34].…”