Elsevier

Food Control

Volume 133, Part B, March 2022, 108663
Food Control

Pesticide residues in fresh vegetables imported into the United Arab Emirates

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2021.108663Get rights and content

Highlights

  • 79 different pesticides were identified in imported fresh vegetables.

  • Acephate, methamidophos & profenofos were identified in more than 200 samples.

  • 30.5% of the samples contained a pesticide above the MRLs.

Abstract

Use of pesticides has drastically increased in many countries. Unfortunately, excessive administration of pesticides may cause adverse health and environment effects. The present study assessed pesticide residues in 5560 vegetable samples that entered the United Arab Emirates (UAE) via ports of the Dubai Emirate during 2018 and 2019. Pesticide residues in vegetables were determined by liquid chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and gas chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). The presentation of the monitoring results was based on the maximum residue limit (MRL) criteria defined by European regulations for each pesticide in each product. A total of 79 different pesticides were identified in the tested samples. Pesticide residues at levels above the MRLs were detected in 30.5% of the samples. Overall, 15 pesticides (acephate, bifenthrin, carbendazim, chlorfenapyr, chlorpyrifos, deltamethrin, dimethoate, hexaconazole, metalaxyl, methamidophos, monocrotophos, omethoate, profenofos, tebuconazole, and triazophos) were detected above their MRLs in more than 50 samples. The results underline the need for continuous monitoring of pesticides in vegetables imported into the UAE.

Introduction

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the largest net importer of fresh produce in the Middle East region. Fresh produce which enters via Dubai Emirate ports is mainly imported from India, Oman, Iran, Pakistan, China, Egypt and Sri Lanka. The high level of demand is due to extreme local weather conditions and limited arable land, making the country reliant on fresh produce imports to meet the requirements of its growing population, which is largely due to the arrival of expatriates (PMA, 2020). Towards the end of the last century, countries in the tropics began to increase their participation in the global economy by providing off-season fresh fruits and vegetables to the countries located in the arid climate zone such as the UAE (FAO, 2017).

It has become evident that the global use of pesticides has drastically increased and this has occurred at a rate of approximately 3.5 million tons per year (Blair et al., 2015; Steingrímsdóttir et al., 2018). Heavy use of pesticides may lead to a variety of detrimental health and environment effects (Yuantari et al., 2015; Ramadan et al., 2020). Alavanja et al. (2013) reported that health problems in humans due to direct or indirect pesticide exposure may take the form of acute effects such as headaches, rashes and nausea and/or long term chronic conditions such as cancer, neurotoxicity and endocrine dysfunction. Further, use of pesticides may result in environmental issues, i.e., disturbance of the balance among insect and animal populations, widespread development of pesticide resistance, environmental pollution and hazards to non-target organisms and wildlife (Hjorth et al., 2011). To minimize health and environmental risks, the level of pesticide residues allowed in foods is generally defined by setting maximum residue limits (MRLs). These limits describe the concentrations of pesticides which can be legally permitted on specific foods and these levels are considered to have no known acute and chronic health effects over a lifetime of consumption. In the UAE, MRL standards (UAE.S MRL1: 2019) for pesticide residues in agricultural and food products are regulated and verified by the Emirates Authority for Standards and Metrology as per CODEX (CODEX, 2021) and EU (EU Commission, 2021) recommendations (Abd El-Mageed et al., 2020). In the Dubai Emirate, the Food Safety Department at Dubai Municipality monitors vegetables at entry to Dubai and other Emirates via the Dubai Emirate ports.

In several studies from a variety of countries there are reports of pesticide residues in vegetable samples. These include Croatia (Knežević & Serdar, 2009), a number of South American countries (Hjorth et al., 2011), Turkey (Bakırcı et al., 2014), China (Yu et al., 2016), Jordan (Algharibeh & AlFararjeh, 2019) and Kenya (Omwenga et al., 2021). Only one study was found that included work on pesticide residues in selected types of fruits and vegetables in the UAE (Abd El-Mageed et al., 2020). Therefore, the objective of the present study was to investigate the presence of pesticide residues in all imported fresh vegetables that entered the UAE via ports of the Dubai Emirate between 2018 and 2019. The resulting data may be used as a reference point for future monitoring programs and the development of preventive measures to minimize human health risks and improve food safety.

Section snippets

Chemicals and reagents

All solvents and chemicals used in extraction procedures and the preparation of mobile phases were of LC-MS/MS reagent grade and obtained from Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH (Taufkirchen, Germany) unless otherwise stated. Glacial acetic acid, acetonitrile, anhydrous magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) and anhydrous sodium acetate, primary and secondary amine exchange material sorbents (PSA), triphenyl phosphate (TPP), and graphitized carbon black (GCB) were obtained from Merck GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany).

Identification of pesticide residues in vegetables

There were a total of 79 different pesticides detected in the tested vegetable samples (Table 2). The pesticides most frequently found in vegetable samples belonged to the organophosphorus, triazole and pyrethroid groups. Recent studies showed that organophosphorus pesticides were more frequently detected in vegetables than other classes of pesticides (Bhandari et al., 2019; Kapeleka et al., 2020). Within the organophosphorus group, Acephate, methamidophos and profenofos were predominant and

Conclusion

The current study showed that acephate, methamidophos and profenofos were the most frequently identified pesticides in vegetable samples with concentrations above the MRL levels. The majority of the samples with pesticides above the MRLs were imported from developing countries. Only few samples originating from developed countries contained pesticides above the MRL. The results of the present study provide important information on the imported commodities gotu kola and broad beans, which were

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tareq M. Osaili: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Maryam.S. Al Sallagi: Conceptualization, Formal analysis. Dinesh.K. Dhanasekaran: Data curation, Writing – original draft. Wael.A.M. Bani Odeh: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Hajer.J. Al Ali: Methodology, Formal analysis. Ahmed.A.S.A. Al Ali: Methodology, Formal analysis. Hadia Radwan: Writing – review & editing. Reyad.S. Obaid: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Richard Holley: Writing – review &

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dubai Municipality, Dubai, United Arab Emirates for funding this project.

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