According to Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 of the European Parliament
and ofthe Council on maximum residue levels of pesticides
in or on food and feed of plant and animal origin [1], official controls
to check compliance with maximum residue levels (MRL) of pesticides
are needed. Indeed, regulatory compliance remains one ofthe
most important drivers behind pesticide residue analysis. Before
food products can enter a particular market, requirements for MRL
must be met for a variety of pesticides [2]. For this reason there is a
need for reliable and sensitive analytical methods that are able to
quantify a large number of compounds at the low limits set by legislation
[3]. Pesticide residue analysis remains a challenging area in
food analysis because of the large number of target analytes with
different chemical structures and the wide diversity of food matrices
[4]. Multi-residue methods provide the tools to the analyst to
measure these compounds [5–7]. Gas chromatography (GC) used to