Recent and future developments of liquid chromatography in pesticide trace analysis

Until recently, the application of liquid chromatography (LC) in pesticide analysis was usually focused on groups of compounds or single compounds for which no suitable conditions were available for analysis with gas chromatography (GC). However, recent developments in both detection and column material technology show that LC significantly enlarged its scope in this field of analysis. Obviously, the most striking example is the rather abrupt transition of LC coupled to mass spectrometric detection (MS) from an experimental and scientifically fashionable technique to a robust, sensitive and selective detection mode rendering LC–MS being increasingly used in pesticide trace analysis. Other recent major developments originate from the innovation of new LC column packing materials, viz. immuno-affinity sorbents, restricted access medium materials and molecular imprinted polymers improving considerably the screening of polar pesticides by means of reversed-phase LC with UV detection. In this review the merits and perspectives of these important LC developments and their impact to current and future applications in pesticide trace analysis are presented and discussed.