Current advances in solid-phase microextraction techniques for the estimation of pesticides from fruits and vegetables

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Microchemical Journal

Abstract

Food safety is a major concern due to the extensive use of pesticides in agricultural practices and food processing. The frequent use of pesticides in the agricultural sector has increased the risk of health-associated diseases, along with negative impacts on the environment. Regulatory agencies and food safety authorities emphasize the requirement for efficient and quick techniques for monitoring pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables. In recent decades, researchers have developed various sample preparation techniques, including liquid-liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction, and QuEChERS, for the estimation of pesticide residues from food matrices. The use of a large quantity of solvents and prolonged sample preparation time limit the application of these techniques for regular application. To make this technique sustainable and eco-friendly, solid-phase microextraction (SPME) has emerged as a solvent-free potential enrichment technique for the analysis of a wide range of pesticides from fruits and vegetables. However, the limited surface area and fragile geometry of regular SPME fibres have restricted their widespread application for regular food quality inspection. To overcome the current challenges associated with SPME fibres, thin-film solid-phase microextraction (TF-SPME) is recognized as an advanced, alternative and robust analytical tool with improved extraction efficiency compared with that of SPME fibres for the estimation of volatile, semi-volatile, and non-volatile pesticides. Although the successful integration of TF-SPME with several mass spectrometry-based methods was well established by past researchers, the cost of commercial microextraction patches has limited their further application for monitoring food pesticides as per regulatory standards. In this review, we summarized the advantages and limitations of conventional enrichment techniques along with recent advancements in the SPME and TF-SPME methods for the preconcentration of multi-residue pesticides in food matrices. Finally, we discuss the future prospects and development of enrichment techniques for fast and accurate food pesticide analysis.

DOI

10.1016/j.microc.2025.114412

Publication Date

8-1-2025

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