Strategies for quantification and confirmation of multi-class polar pesticides and transformation products in water by LC-MS2 using triple quadrupole and hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight analyzers

In this article, we discuss different strategies for developing sensitive multi-residue methods for pesticides in water, able to correctly quantify and confirm compounds detected in samples. We discuss the use of different analyzers, triple quadrupole and hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight and compare their performances for screening purposes, and for the quantification and confirmation of positive samples. We present several practical cases of water samples, including some positive findings that would result in false positives if no criteria were applied for unequivocal confirmation of the identity of detected compounds.