Simultaneous determination of 37 pesticides in fresh and processed button mushroom  Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Imbach

Abstract An efficient modified QuEChERS procedure was established for the simultaneous determination of 37 pesticides in fresh and processed button mushroom by employing GC/ GC-MS and LC-MS/MS. The effectiveness, reliability and accuracy of the method were assessed through various validation parameters such as linearity, LOD, LOQ, precision, accuracy, uncertainty, and matrix effect. The linearity calibration for all the selected pesticides in both LC-MS/MS and GC were ≥0.970. The LOD and LOQ values obtained were 0.003 and 0.01 µg g-1 respectively. The recoveries obtained were in the acceptable range (71.69 to 117.90%) with RSD less than 20 per cent. Matrix effect and uncertainty for all target compounds were in the acceptable range. Monitoring of button mushrooms collected from markets revealed the presence of cypermethrin residues in four of the samples tested out of 25 fresh button mushroom samples.