Multiresidue Determination of Pesticides in Potato Tuber, Peel, and Pulp by QuEChERS and UHPLC-MS/MS

Pesticides have been widely used to control pests and weeds during food production or storage, but when used incorrectly, they can cause damage to human health and the environment. Thus, this study aimed to develop and validate a multiresidue method for the determination of pesticides in potatoes, as well as to evaluate the concentrations in the peel and pulp of the tuber. The method is based on the original QuEChERS procedure for sample preparation, with a clean-up step by dispersive solid phase extraction (d-SPE) using C18 as sorbent and determination by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). The method was validated for 82 pesticides at the spike levels 10, 25, and 50 µg kg −1 presenting adequate accuracy and precision results. The method is simple and effective, achieving a practical quantification limit of 10 µg kg −1 for most of the pesticides. In order to evaluate the proposed method, it was applied to commercial potato samples, and, subsequently, the distribution of pesticides in the peel and pulp part was evaluated indicating that some pesticides are concentrated in the peel and others in the pulp, depending on the physicochemical properties of the pesticides. The results showed the presence of several pesticides, including some prohibited for potato crops. The method was successfully applied in commercial samples and demonstrated to be effective for routine analysis.