Determination of 12 Carbamate Insecticides in Typical Vegetables and Fruits by Rapid Multi-Plug Filtration Cleanup and Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry Detection

A multiresidue method for determining 12 carbamate pesticides in purple cabbage, orange, watermelon, cucumber, cowpea and Lactuca sativa L. employing multi-plug filtration cleanup (m-PFC) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-MS/MS) was developed. M-PFC was carried out by cleanup at dispersive solid phase extraction (d-SPE), one m-PFC tip-filtration, two m-PFC tip-filtration and other methods (1–3 m-PFC cleanups). Results demonstrated that filtration simplified the cleanup method compared with d-SPE and other m-PFC methods (1–3 m-PFC cleanups). The method validation results showed that the method was linear, selective and accurate. The limits of quantification (LOQs) were 0.05–5.0 μg/kg, and the recoveries were in the range of 70.1–119.9% in different matrices. Although matrix effects were observed, they were successfully compensated using matrix-matched calibration. Finally, the developed method was successfully applied to detect pesticides in real samples.