Abstract: A sensitive and selective method is presented for the determination of paraquat residue in fruits, vegetables, beans and grain by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). Paraquat in samples was extracted with water and cleaned-up with a weak cation exchange (WCX) column to obtain an extract suitable for analysis using HPLC-MS/MS. The paraquat was separated by a CAPCELL PAK ST column (150 mm×2.0 mm) and with acetonitrile-10 mmol/L ammonium acetate solution (adjusted to pH 4.0 by formic acid) as the mobile phase, and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) was used with electrospray ionization in the positive ion mode. The calibration curve was linear between the peak area and the mass concentration of paraquat from 0.01 to 0.1 mg/L with the correlation coefficient of 0.993. Recoveries of paraquat spiked in samples at three levels ranged from 84.0% to 106.0% with the relative standard deviations of 7.8%~18.8%. The limits of detection (LODs) of paraquat were 0.01 mg/kg in fruits and vegetables and 0.05 mg/kg in beans and grain. The LODs can meet the requirements of international maximum residue limit.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry(HPLC-MS/MS), paraquat, plant-derived foodstuffs, residue, weak cation exchange