Conduct cooperative research in developing and evaluating molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for the removal of chlorophyll from green vegetble extracts produced by the QuEChERS method for pesticide residue analysis.
APPROACH: UCT will provide expertise in the polymerization process and pulverization of the MIPs for evaluations of performance and practical use by ARS collaborators for gas and liquid chromatographic analysis with mass spectrometric detection (GC-MS and LC-MS/MS). The synthesis of the MIPs will be optimized through a series of experiments, removal of chlorophyll from the extracts will be measured gravimetrically and spectrometrically, and recoveries of representative pesticide analytes will be determined through GC-MS and LC-MS/MS.