Travelling-wave ion mobility time-of-flight mass spectrometry as an alternative strategy for screening of multi-class pesticides in fruits and vegetables

This paper reports a novel approach to screening multi-class pesticides by ion mobility timeof-
flight mass spectrometry detection. Nitrogen was selected as mobility gas. After
optimization of the different ion mobility parameters, determination of matrix effect on the
drift times was conducted using different matrix extracts. The results showed that drift time
values are not influenced by the matrix and also are independent of the concentration within
the working range for 100 pesticides tested, making drift time a powerful additional
identification tool. Based on statistics, 2% variation criteria provides a good fit for all the
pesticides targeted, and could be considered as a maximum acceptable criteria associated with the
drift time parameter for identification purpose. This 2% value is in agreement with already reported
criteria, for instance, for GC or LC retention time in European documents. Finally, the well-known
feature of mobility to separate complex mixtures was also tested to obtain purified extracted mass spectra of pesticides in fruit extract.