Pesticides are among the most dangerous environmental pollutants because of their stability, mobility and long-term effects on living organisms. Their presence in the environment is a particular danger. It is therefore crucial to monitor pesticide residues using all available analytical methods. The analysis of environmental samples for the presence of pesticides is very difficult: the processes involved in sample preparation are labor-intensive and time-consuming. To date, it has been standard practice to use large quantities of organic solvents in the sample preparation process; but as these solvents are themselves hazardous, solvent-less and solvent-minimized techniques are becoming popular. The application of Green Chemistry principles to sample preparation is primarily leading to the miniaturization of procedures and the use of solvent-less techniques, and these are discussed in the paper.

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Abstract-Applied all over the world, pesticides are some of the most common pollutants of the environment because of their stability, mobility, their consequent long-term adverse effects on living organisms in general and human health in particular. For these reasons it is essential to monitor and analyse pesticide residues in the fruits and vegetables. The analysis of food samples for the presence of pesticides causes a lot of difficulties in consideration of specificity of sample preparation based on multistage operations of purification of sample containing vestigial amount of analyte with simultaneous large amount of interferents. The extraction and determination of pesticide residues in fruit and vegetable samples are discussed, as are the techniques most commonly used in these processes. The difficulties occurring at each stage in the analytical procedure are outlined.