Pesticides have been widely used to prevent or destroy agricultural pests and thereby improve food production throughout the world. However, extensive use of pesticides may pose potential health risks to humans if harmful residues appear in foods. The healthy food pyramid recommends eating fruits and vegetables for several reasons, including vitamins, cancer prevention, and low calories. Routine and comprehensive testing of multiresidue pesticides in fruits and vegetables is important for regulatory agencies to ensure that concentrations of toxic pesticides are below tolerance levels.

Development of simple and reliable methods for the analysis of trace contaminants in fruits and vegetables is a particularly challenging task. After initial extraction using organic solvent (typically acetonitrile or acetone) [1], cleanup must be performed to avoid false positive results due to matrix effects. Conventional liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) is time-consuming, laborious, and usually involves significant glassware usage and disposal of large volumes of hazardous organic waste [2]. Solid phase extraction (SPE) techniques have gained increasing interest because of their selectivity and because large volumes of organic solvents are not necessary. Almost all adsorbent types can be packed into the SPE column format, and the use of molecularly imprinted,....