The QuEChERS Approach for the Determination of Pesticide Residues in Soil Samples: An Overview.

Soil samples are complex matrixes; therefore, soil sample preparation is a critical step, and one that is usually expensive, time-consuming, and labor intensive. The quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method, originally developed for the determination of pesticides in fruits and vegetables, has been recently modified and adopted for the analysis of pesticides in soil. This paper reviews all aspects of sample preparation, including extraction and clean-up, and describes the applications of conventional and modified QuEChERS techniques. It also presents a comparison of the QuEChERS method with other methods used for sample preparation for determination of pesticides in soil.