ABSTRACT
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is a wellestablished and the most commonly used technique for residue analysis of pesticides in environmental samples. However, non volatile, thermally labile polar compounds, such as the new generation herbicides, are not amenable to GC methods, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can be used for their determination without the derivatization step. Liquid chromatography (LC) is an extremely versatile technique, whose application has increased dramatically in the last 10 years, also for the typical "GC pesticides." Several multiresidue (MR) methods based on LC with ultraviolet (UV), fluorescence, and electrochemical detection have been developed for these contaminants in aqueous matrices, but, nowadays, the coupling to MS allows an unambiguous identification or confirmation with high specificity and sensitivity, similar to GC-MS.
