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Develop and validate a state-of-the-art approach to detect chemical residues in cereals, grains, nuts, oils, and similar commodities. This also entails technology transfer activities of methods developed in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) laboratory to General Mills Operations, Inc. (General Mills) in order to meet their pesticide residue monitoring needs. <P> The collaborative research effort has the main objective to develop, evaluate, and validate analytical monitoring approaches using state-of-the-art instruments coupled with the QuEChERS sample preparation method, which is able to extract hundreds of pesticides from the commodities of interest. The results of the research will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Approach: Comprehensive gas chromatography ? time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-TOF) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) will be tested in the analysis of multiple pesticides in QuEChERS extracts of cereals, nuts, oils, dough, and similar commodities. This will enable the monitoring of more analytes at lower levels with better quality of results, while saving time, labor, and other expenses in the process. The developed method will be validated in the General Mills lab, and their personnel, instruments, and resources will be available to support this project.