Fast Pesticide Residue Analysis in Food with a New Benchtop GC-TOFMS: Pegasus BT

Importance of the topic

Pesticide residue analysis in food is essential to protect public health, meet regulatory standards, and ensure the safety of agricultural products.
High throughput methods support routine monitoring in food quality control laboratories.

Objectives and overview

This application note demonstrates a rapid pesticide screening method using a 15 m GC column and a benchtop GC-TOFMS system without compromising analytical performance.

• Reduce chromatographic runtime by over half
• Maintain detection of all target pesticides through deconvolution
• Combine qualitative and quantitative analysis in one run

Methodology and instrumentation

A bulk strawberry QuEChERS extract was fortified with organonitrogen pesticides at concentrations from 0.10 to 5000 ng/g.
Chromatographic separation employed a 15 m x 0.25 mm x 0.25 μm Rxi-5ms column.
Mass spectral data were acquired from 45 to 650 m/z at 10 spectra per second.
Concurrent Target Analyte Find and NonTarget Deconvolution algorithms in ChromaTOF 5.0 enabled quantitative calibration and qualitative peak finding.

Used Instrumentation

• LECO Pegasus BT time-of-flight mass spectrometer
• Agilent 7890B gas chromatograph with LECO L-PAL3 autosampler
• ChromaTOF software version 5.0

Main results and discussion

The optimized method achieved a total runtime of 8.55 minutes with no loss in pesticidal coverage.

• All pesticides showed linear calibration (R2 > 0.999) over a four-order dynamic range
• Limits of detection were below 1 ng/g for all but two compounds, and below 0.1 ng/g for 74% of targets
• NonTarget Deconvolution resolved coeluting peaks, identifying both spiked and naturally occurring compounds

Benefits and practical applications

• Significant reduction in analysis time improves laboratory throughput
• Single-injection dual-mode analysis streamlines workflows
• Robust detection and quantitation at sub-ppb levels meet or exceed regulatory guidelines
• Non-target screening capabilities support broader sample characterization

Future trends and opportunities

Ongoing developments in high-speed chromatography and advanced deconvolution algorithms will further shrink analysis time.
Integration with automated sample preparation and AI-driven data interpretation is expected to enhance screening breadth and accuracy.

Conclusion

The Pegasus BT benchtop GC-TOFMS delivers rapid, reliable pesticide residue analysis with exceptional spectral fidelity and throughput, offering a powerful tool for food safety laboratories.