The massive use of pesticides has brought great risks to food and environmental safety. It is necessary to develop reliable analytical methods and evaluate risks through monitoring studies. Here, a method was used for the simultaneous determination of flupyradifurone (FPF) and its two metabolites in fresh ginseng, dried ginseng, ginseng plants, and soil. The method exhibited good accuracy (recoveries of 72.8-97.5%) and precision (relative standard deviations of 1.1-8.5%). The field experiments demonstrated that FPF had half-lives of 4.5-7.9 d and 10.0-16.9 d in ginseng plants and soil, respectively. The concentrations of total terminal residues in soil, ginseng plants, dried ginseng, and ginseng were less than 0.516, 2.623, 2.363, and 0.641 mg/kg, respectively. Based on these results, the soil environmental risk assessment shows that the environmental risk of FPF to soil organisms is acceptable. The processing factors for FPF residues in ginseng were 3.82-4.59, indicating that the concentration of residues increased in ginseng after drying. A dietary risk assessment showed that the risk of FPF residues from long-term and short-term dietary exposures to global consumers were 0.1-0.4% and 12.07-13.16%, respectively, indicating that the application of FPF to ginseng at the recommended dose does not pose a significant risk to consumers.
Keywords: analytical method; flupyradifurone; ginseng; mass spectrometry; pesticide residue analysis.