ABSTRACT
Nowadays, more than 1100 compounds are registered for the control of undesirable insects, weeds, and moulds in agricultural crops. The development of multiresidue methods based on chromatographic techniques coupled to mass spectrometry (MS), to control a large number of pesticides in a single analysis, is a worldwide strategy in pesticide analysis. In the case of multiresidue methods, the extracting solvent has to be suitable for the extraction of compounds within a wide polarity range from a variety of matrices containing different amounts of water, fats, sugars, and other substances. Recent analytical developments have attempted to minimize the amount of sample and solvent volume. In this sense, the volume used during extraction with the ethyl acetate (EtAc) method has changed throughout the years. The pH of the extract is very important for a large number of pesticides, as it may affect not only their dissociation and solvation but also their stability.
