GC-MS/MS Determination of Residual Amounts of Pesticides in Ginger

Gas chromatography in hyphenation with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was applied to the determination of residual amounts of 25 pesticides in ginger. The sample was extracted with acetonitrile, which was concentrated and purified by NH2/Carbon solid-phase extraction column. The eluate was evaporated to near dryness and diluted to a definite volume with mixture of n-hexane and acetone (9+1), and separated on the VF-5MS column. The eluate was used for tandem MS analysis. Linear relationships between values of peak area and mass concentration of the 25 pesticides were obtained in the same range of 0.020-0.500 mg·L-1, with detection limits (3S/N) in the range of 0.2-10.0 μg·kg-1. Test for recovery were made by addition of standard at 2 different concentration levels, values of recovery for most of the pesticides found were in the range of 77%-130%, with values of RSD′s (n=5) less than 20%.