Microcomputer programming in basic for the evaluation of capillary gas chromatography in the analysis of pesticide residues. I. MATRIXCOMP--a program that facilitates the recognition of interfering peaks from the biological matrix.

Chromatograms of pesticide residues in food include peaks produced by pesticides and matrix compounds. Pesticide peaks are recognized by means of relative retention times and response factors; two detectors are used and internal standard methods are applied. Chromatograms of reference samples for all types of food are stored as raw data in a reduced format, together with tables of all chromatographic data for the matrix compounds. MATRIXCOMP provides the analyst with the chromatograms of the actual sample and the reference in parallel on a visual display screen for visual comparison. Simultaneously, the relevant chromatographic data for the sample, the reference and the calibration tables are displayed on a second screen page in a condensed form.