Summary: | Residual pesticides are one of the major food safety concerns around the world. There is a demand for simple and reliable methods to monitor pesticide residues in foods. In this study, a sensitive method for determination of pymetrozine in apple and cabbage samples using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) based on decanethiol functionalized silver nanoparticles was established. The proposed method performed satisfactorily with the linear detection range of 0.01–1.00 mg/L and limit of detection (LOD) of 0.01 mg/L in methanol. In addition, it was successfully used to detect pymetrozine in apple and cabbage samples, the LOD was 0.02 and 0.03 mg/L, respectively, and the recoveries of spiked cabbage and apple ranged 70.40–104.00%, with relative standard deviations below 12.18% and 10.33% for intra-day and inter-day tests. Moreover, the results of the correlation test with real cabbage samples of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry showed that they were highly correlated (slope = 0.9895, <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> = 0.9953). This study provides a sensitive approach for detection of pymetrozine in apple and cabbage, which has great potential for determination of pymetrozine residues in food products.
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