Simultaneous determination of 124 pesticide residues in Chinese liquor and liquor-making raw materials (sorghum and rice hull) by rapid Multi-plug Filtration Cleanup and gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

•The rapid m-PFC syringe was packed with MWCNTs, PSA and C18.•124 pesticides in distilled spirit, sorghum and rice hull were determined by GC-MS/MS.•The m-PFC procedure was demonstrated to be superior to d-SPE method.•The m-PFC method was optimized to obtain the best results with 3 repetitions.•The method was successfully applied to monitor pesticide residues in samples.

A multi-residue method was developed for the determination of 124 pesticide residues in Chinese liquor and liquor-making raw materials (sorghum and rice hull) by rapid Multi-plug Filtration Cleanup (m-PFC) and GC-MS/MS detection. Different combination and proportion sets of sorbents were initially optimized for each matrix with a dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE) procedure. Satisfactory linearity was obtained for the 124 pesticides with regression coefficients (R2) greater than 0.9901. Mean recoveries of 121 pesticides were in the range of 71-121% with Relative Standard Deviations (RSDs) lower than 16.8% except cyprodinil, diflufenican and prothioconazole. The Limit of Quantification (LOQs) was in the range of 1.0 × 10−4-5.0 × 10−3 mg kg−1 and the Limit of Detection (LODs) ranged from 3.0 × 10−5 to 1.5 × 10−3 mg kg−1 for the 124 pesticides in the matrices. It is demonstrated the m-PFC procedure is superior to the d-SPE method and it could be used to routinely monitor of pesticide residues in market samples.