GC/MS Pesticide Analysis
The worldwide use of pesticides in food and supplement production has been a cause of increasing concern amongst retailers, regulators and end users. Consumers are looking for the assurance that the foods they eat and supplements they take are safe and free of unwanted contaminants.
The chemical diversity of pesticides presents a considerable challenge to food safety chemists, who require a range of analytical techniques to extract them from food samples, and then accurately and efficiently determine their identity and concentration at trace levels. Agilent’s comprehensive sample preparation, chromatography and mass spectrometry portfolio provides all the tools needed to meet these analytical challenges.
Agilent also offers a portfolio of pesticide analyzers that are ready to use immediately after installation. The proper columns, liner, purged ultimate union for column backflushing and retention-time-locked method are all installed at the factory. Systems are also tested and calibrated with known pesticide samples before being shipped, and are then re-tested during installation for complete operational performance.
For targeted quantitation of pesticides at trace levels, Agilent offers two different pesticide analyzers based on our popular Agilent 7000C GC Triple Quadrupole GC/MS system. These systems come with Agilent’s Pesticide and Environmental Contaminants Database that contains an average of eight MRMs for over 1000 pesticides and other toxic contaminants. This database includes locked retention times for three different GC/MS methods along with tools that allow you to develop your own customized GC/QQQ method in a matter of minutes.
In addition, Agilent offers two pesticide analyzers based on our 5977 single quadrupole GC/MSD. This system uses Agilent’s powerful Deconvolution Reporting Software together with Agilent’s retention-time-locked Pesticide and Endocrine Disruptor Library to screen for 927 pesticides in a single analysis. Calibrated pesticides can be quantified, but you can screen for all of these compounds even if you don’t have the standards.
