HERBICIDE CONTAMINATION IN CARROT GROWN IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

Food safety and security is a burning issue of the time whereas vegetable production is an important aspect of agriculture. Use of herbicides for vegetable production is very common in Pakistan but no proper procedure has been planned to keep optimal level of doses of herbicide under permissible limit. To estimate the pesticide residues, samples from the leading carrot producing sites were collected along with the samples from the market. The samples were processed using standard procedures and qualitative and quantitative analysis was performed by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). It was concluded that all the samples were contaminated with S-metolachlor in the range of 0.45 to 0.73 mg kg^-1 which was above the permissible limit (0.40 mg kg^-1).