Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopic Analysis of Phorate and Fenthion Pesticide in Apple Skin Using Silver Nanoparticles

Abstract

Traditional pesticide residue detection methods are usually complicated, time consuming, and expensive. Rapid, portable, online, and real-time detection kits are the developing direction of pesticide testing. In this paper, we used a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technique to detect the organophosphate pesticide residue of phorate and fenthion in apple skin, for the purpose of finding a fast, simple, and convenient detection method for pesticide detection. The results showed that the characteristic wavenumbers of the two organophosphorus pesticides are more easily identified using SERS. We selected the Raman peaks at 728 cm−1 of phorate and 1215 cm−1 of fenthion as the target peaks for quantitative analysis, and utilized internal standards to establish linear regression models for phorate and fenthion. The detection limit was 0.05 mg/L for phorate and 0.4 mg/L for fenthion. This method can be used as a quantitative analytical reference for the detection of phorate and fenthion.