Determination of pesticide residues in olives and olive oil by matrix solid-phase dispersion followed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry

A novel analytical approach has been developed and evaluated for the quantitative analysis of a selected group of widely used pesticides (dimethoate, simazine, atrazine, diuron, terbuthylazine, methyl-parathion, methyl-pirimiphos, endosulfan I, endosulfan II, endosulfan sulphate, cypermethrin and deltamethrin), which can be found at trace levels in olive oil and olives. The proposed methodology is based on matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD), (with a preliminary liquid-liquid extraction in olive oil samples) using aminopropyl as sorbent material with a clean-up performed in the elution step with Florisil, followed by mass spectrometric identification and quantitation of the selected pesticides using both gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) in positive ionization mode. The recoveries obtained (with mean values between 85 and 115% (obtained at different fortification levels) with RSD values below 10% in most cases, confirm the usefulness of the proposed methodology for the analyses of these kind of complex samples with a high fat content. Moreover, the obtained detection limits, which were below 5 μg kg−1 by LC-MS analyses and ranged from 10 to 60 μg kg−1 by GC-MS meet the requirements established by the olive oil pesticide regulatory programs. The method was satisfactorily applied to different olives and olive oil samples.