Wide-scope screening and quantification of 50 pesticides in wine by liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry combined with liquid chromatography/quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry.

In this paper, a wide scope screening method of pesticides in wine was established using liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF MS) and liquid chromatography/quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry (LC-QqLIT MS). Information dependent acquisition (IDA) experiments are used to obtain both MS and MS/MS information for LC-QTOF MS analysis. For LC-QqLIT MS analysis, MS/MS spectra of target pesticides were simultaneously acquired using Enhanced Product Ion (EPI) mode at very low concentrations to increase the confidence in analytical results of multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) by library searching. Method validation was carried out using 50 pesticides commonly used in vineyards. The LOQs, linearity, repeatability were determined and good enough for quantification. The screening and quantification results obtained using LC-QTOF MS and LC-QqLIT MS were compared. Contaminants were screened against libraries containing over 2800 compounds based on accurate mass, isotopic patterns, and MS/MS spectra searching to extend the scope of this methodology to non-target screening.