Simultaneous Determination of Seven Nicotinic Insecticides in Tea by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Simultaneous determination of seven nicotinic insecticides in tea was established by ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.The sample of tea was extracted under ultrasonication and cleaned up by QuEChERS method.The analytes were separated on UPLC BEH C18 column and quantified by external standard method under multiple reaction monitoring(MRM) mode with positive electrospray ionization.Seven nicotinic insecticides showed good linearities with correlation coefficients all more than 0.997 6.The limits of detection were 0.2 μg/kg-2.6 μg/kg,the average recoveries were 92.0 %-109.8 % and the relative standard deviations were 0.5 %-7.7 %.The proposed method has been applied to the determination of actual tea samples.