Shimadzu Method Package Ver. 2 for testing residual pesticides in foods

Shimadzu has released its GC-MS Method Package Ver. 2 to address the increasing demand for reliable testing of residual pesticides in foods, feed additives and veterinary drugs. Shimadzu claims that, when analysing up to 800 different residual pesticides, the package may improve the speed and efficiency of GC-MS technology as it provides simple inspection methods and batch analysis of multiple component samples. The package covers all the pesticides that can be analysed by GC-MS in accordance with the Positive List System.

The package has been designed for use with Shimadzu’s GCMS-QP2010 series of instruments and supports GCMS Solution Ver. 2.60. It includes a CD-ROM containing method files preregistered with optimised analytical conditions, compound information (including retention indices), report format files and tuning files. Also included are an instruction manual and five glass inserts.

To help overcome the influence of contamination of matrices in actual sample analysis or erroneous identification caused by retention time shift, a GC-MS identification support tool is also included. The tool, which runs linked with GCMS Solution, enables identification results to be displayed in order from components having the highest potential to exist, allowing these results to be studied while viewing the chromatogram.

Because the retention indices of all compounds are preregistered, GCMS Solution’s AART (Automatic Adjustment of Retention Time) function allows retention times to be corrected for easier analysis. Shimadzu claims the easily installed method files are registered with all of the pesticide standard reagents that are commercially available, including those in the company’s current pesticide libraries.