Magnitude of picoxystrobin residues in strawberry under Egyptian conditions: dissipation pattern and consumer risk assessment.

Picoxystrobin is a synthetic strobilurin fungicide widely used in Egypt to control downy and powdery mildews, a risk that is significant also in cultivating strawberries. In the ccurrent work, the safety to consumers from the use of picoxystrobin in strawberries along with its residue behaviour was studied. Supervised field trials were conducted to investigate the residue dynamics and terminal residues of picoxystrobin in strawberries under Egyptian conditions for several agricultural practices including worst-case scenarios. For the measurement of residues in fruit, a QuEChERS-based protocol coupled with LC-MS/MS was employed and successfully validated at 0.001 mg kg. A decline of picoxystrobin residues in fruit fitted a first-order decay process with a calculated t of 5.4 days with a significant degradation (79%) after 14 days. A consumer risk assessment was performed employing both FAO/WHO and EFSA approaches, in which no significant health risks after consumption of strawberries were identified.