As the consumption of aquatic products increased, the need for regulation of pesticide residues in aquatic products also emerged. Thus, in this study, a scheduled multiple reaction monitoring (sMRM) method employing a novel extraction and purification step based on QuEChERS with EDTA was developed for the simultaneous quantitation of 20 pesticides (alachlor, aldicarb, carbofuran, diazinon, dimethoate, dimethomorph, ethoprophos, ferimzone, fluridone, hexaconazole, iprobenfos, malathion, methidathion, methiocarb, phenthoate, phosalone, phosmet, phosphamidon, pirimicarb, and simazine) in aquatic products. Additionally, the present method was validated in the aspects of specificity, linearity (r ≥ 0.980), sensitivity (the limit of quantitation (LOQ) ≤ 5 ng/g), relative standard deviation, RSD (1.0% ≤ RSD ≤ 19.4%), and recovery (60.1% ≤ recovery ≤ 117.9%). Finally, the validated method was applied for the determination of the 20 pesticide residues in eel and shrimp purchased from local food markets. In the present study, QuEChERS with EDTA was successfully expanded to residual pesticide analysis for the first time. The present method could contribute to the rapid and successful establishment of the positive list system in South Korea.
Keywords: Aquatic products; LC-MS/MS; Multiresidue; Pesticides; QuEChERS.