QuEChERS stands for (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe) and pronounced as (catchers) is a method that had been developed for multi-pesticide residue analyses in food. This study was conducted to investigate the efficacy of QuEChERS method for analyzing the organochlorine pesticides residues in cow's milk.
Twenty organochlorine pesticide namely (Benzene, 1,3,5-trichloro, Tetrachlorobenzene, Benzene pentachloro. alfa-Lindane, Benzene hexachloro, Beta Lindane, Gammexane, Quintozene, Heptachlor, Aldrine, Heptachlor epoxide, Endosulfan-I , p,p'-DDE, Dieldrin , Endrin , Endosulfan-II , DDD , o,p' DDT , p,p'- DDT and Methoxychlor were examined.
The linearity of the standard curve (r2) of all the compounds were not less than (0.99) even with those compounds that showed low consistent recovery rates (18- 60%) such as 1,3,5-trichloro, Tetrachlorobenzene, Benzene, pentachloro- and Benzene, hexachloro-) along the studied concentration range (25-1000ppb). The relative standard deviations of all compounds were less than 20% when using both AOAC, 2007.01(2007) and EN 15662 (2008) method.
It could be concluded that when analyzing pesticide residues (specially organochlorine) in food (specially milk) using QuECHERS technique, spiked blank samples with the compound or compounds under investigation should be presented in the run sequence in between the real examined samples to make sure about the recovery rate of each analyte at different concentration to give an exact interpretation of the results. Is important to develop and optimize more specific methods when analyzing poorly recovered organochlorine pesticide in milk.