Multi-residue determination of pesticides in fruit-based soft drinks by fast liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry

This work reports a rapid and reliable method for the determination of 33 multi-class pesticides in fruit-based soft drinks. The proposed method consists of a sample treatment step based on solid-phase extraction using hydrophilic–lipophilic balanced polymer-based reverse-phase SPE cartridges, followed by identification and quantitation of the target pesticides by rapid resolution liquid chromatography using a short C18 column (4.6 mm × 50 mm) with 1.8 μm particle size and mass spectrometric detection using electrospray time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC–TOFMS). The identification and confirmation of the compounds were based on retention time matching along with the accurate mass measurements of the protonated molecules ([M+H]+) and their main fragment ions. Fruit-based soft drinks spiked at different fortification levels (10 and 50 μg L−1) yielded average recoveries in the range 66–124% with RSD (%) below 14% (n = 6). The obtained limits of quantitation varied in the range 0.02–2 μg L−1. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of 14 market-purchased fruit-based soft drinks samples collected in some European countries, showing its potential applicability and revealing the presence of some of the target species in the μg L−1 range.