A modified quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe method with hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvent as extractant and analyte protectant for analyzing pyrethroid residues in tomatoes.

In this work, a novel quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe technique with hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvent as both extractant and analyte protectant was developed and combined with GC-MS/MS to analyze pyrethroid residues in tomatoes. Eight hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvents were firstly evaluated as analyte protectants and those with decanoic acid or lactic acid as hydrogen bond donor were demonstrated to be effective in compensating for the matrix effects of pyrethroids in the GC system. Hence, they were added to solvent standards for correcting the quantitation errors instead of matrix-matched calibration standards. Then the abilities of these acid-based deep eutectic solvents to extract pyrethriods from tomatoes were evaluated. Results showed the recoveries of all pyrethroids reached to over 80% with only 5ml menthol: decanoic acid (1:1) used, and good phase separation was easily achieved without the addition of inorganic salt in the extraction step, indicating hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvent could be a green substitute for acetonitrile in the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe extraction. Compared with the conventional method, the proposed protocol improved the recoveries, reduced the matrix effects and simplified the extraction step, demonstrating to be an effective, fast and green method.