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This project entails the collaboration between ARS scientist, Steven Lehotay, Israeli scientist, Aviv Amirav of Tel Aviv University, and Utkur Rasulev of the Arifov Institute of Electronics in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The objectives for the ARS collaborator are as follows: <OL> <LI> Rapid, easy, and inexpensive methods will be developed for the analysis of chemical contaminants in food and environmental samples, in particular, the QuEChERS approach developed in the ARS lab for pesticides in fruits and vegetables will be expanded to other food matrices and chemicals of interest in Uzbekistan; <LI>The method will be transferred to the Uzbeki scientists who will be trained to use it in their laboratories; <LI>The use of automated direct sample introduction (DSI) in gas chromatographic / mass spectrometric (GC/MS) analysis of pesticides will be evaluated and optimized, including investigations using in-situ chemical derivatization; <LI>The speed of the GC-MS analysis will be increased by developing fast-GC/MS methods in combination with QuEChERS and automated DSI for pesticide analysis.
Approach: QuEChERS stands for quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe and lives up to its name in being the newest generation method for pesticide residue analysis of food matrices. The method takes advantage of state-of-the-art analytical techniques such as GC/MS to ease and speed the sample preparation process without sacrificing quality of the results. The QuEChERS method has been demonstrated to extract hundreds of pesticide residues from a variety of food matrices. This approach will be further investigated for pesticides and commodities of interest to Uzbekistan agriculture, and transferred to laboratories in Uzbekistan charged with their analysis. Other advantageous techniques developed together and separately in the ARS and Tel Aviv laboratories of Lehotay and Amirav will also be further investigated and transferred. In the case of ARS, automated DSI coupled to fast-GC/MS analysis will be further investigated using the same pesticide and commodity pairs used in the QuEChERS studies. The combination of QuEChERS with those automated and fast detection methods will provide Uzbeki scientists with the state-of-the-art capabilities to achieve efficient and effective monitroring of pesticide residues in food and the environment.