Determination of organophosphorus and synthetic pyrethroid pesticide residues and their variability in large size fruit crops

Abstract BACKGROUND Variability of pesticide residues in food item plays a key role for the evaluation of consumer food safety. However, variability factors (VFs) derived from the large size fruit crops are still scarce. Therefore, the present work was aimed to quantify pesticide residues and to estimate VFs in large size fruit crops of mango and guava. RESULTS A total of 140 mango and 130 guava samples from different marketplaces in Bangladesh were collected to estimate the variability of pesticide residues (acephate, diazinon, malathion, fenitrothion, chlorpyrifos, quinalphos, dimethoate and cypermethrin) by in‐house validated methods based on modified QuEChERS extraction and gas chromatography coupled with electron capture detector (ECD) and flame thermionic detector (FTD). The method was validated at three fortification levels (0.01, 0.10 and 0.30 mg kg −1 ) and satisfactory recoveries (80–111%) with relative standard deviation (RSD r ) ≤ 13% were achieved. A wide variation of residues was found in the analyzed samples. In the case of mango, the ranges of residues were 0.011–0.314, 0.015–0.04, and 0.05–0.291 mg kg −1 , respectively, for cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, and dimethoate, while in the case of guava, the ranges were 0.04–0.113, and 0.03–0.290 mg kg −1 , respectively, for cypermethrin and acephate. The average VF for mango was 4.06 and it was 5.70 for guava. CONCLUSION VFs originating from the marketed samples of mango and guava are reported in this study for the first time. The estimated VFs were higher than the default value of 3, therefore, the default VFs should be reconsidered when more data are obtained regarding large size crops. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry