Chromatography Forum

Hi!
We analyse pesticides in fruits and vegetables by GC/MS.
Do you clean (rinse with distilled water) your fruits and vegetables before homogeneisation or not

If you are looking for systematic pesticide, it does not matter if you clean them or not. if you are looking for pesticide on the surface yes it does, however, water cannot remove pesticide unless uses with surfactant.

Good Luck

We treat our fruit and vegetable samples like a consumer would:
-Discard of any damaged/deteriorated portions
-Store samples as a consumer would and try to process w/in 72-120 hours
-Wash and Treat fruit and vegetables as a consumer would, approximately 15-20 seconds under cold running tap water and use a clean, dry knife to trim end pieces (i.e. mushrooms) and/or remove any inedible/woody portions (i.e. apple core)

This is done to ensure that our results closely represent what a consumer is exposed to under normal circumstances. Although, not every consumer will act the same. In the end it is up to you to decide how you want to treat your fruit and vegetable samples, just document it so that your preparation and homogenization process can be replicated by anyone.

FDA PAM I has prep methods for all the common fruits and vegetables. In general you do NOT wash them, peel them, etc. You do normally discard stems.

Thank you all for information