Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Department of Bioenvironmental Chemistry master's student Se-min Kang (supervisor Professor Hoon Choi) received the Outstanding Paper Presentation Award at the recently held '2026 Korean Society of Environmental Agriculture Annual Meeting and Conference' in recognition of research achievements in residue analysis of fungicides.

The conference, hosted by the Korean Society of Environmental Agriculture, was held under the theme "Agricultural Environment Management Using Artificial Intelligence," and researchers in the agricultural and environmental fields from across the country participated to share the latest research outcomes.

At the conference, Se-min Kang presented on "Thermal Decomposition Quantification of Phthalimide Fungicides and Optimization of LC-MS/MS Analytical Conditions." The study was carried out jointly with JBNU master's student Jun-young Hwang and undergraduate students Seung-uk Kim and Jung-woo Hwang, with Professor Hoon Choi serving as corresponding author.

According to the research team, phthalimide fungicides such as captan, folpet, and captafol are widely used on fruit trees and vegetables, but in the GC (gas chromatography) analysis commonly used for residue analysis, the high temperature of the injection port causes the original compounds to decompose, limiting accurate residue quantification. In actual experiments under GC injection port conditions of 280°C, captan and folpet were found to be converted to degradation products at rates of 58.7% and 70.6%, respectively.

To reduce analytical errors from thermal decomposition, the team focused on LC-MS/MS (liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry) and precisely optimized the electrospray ionization (ESI) conditions.

Previously, phthalimide fungicides showed low sensitivity under ESI conditions, and other ionization methods such as APCI were mainly used. The team overcame these limitations by stepwise adjustment of ion source temperature, gas pressure, and voltage settings.

As a result, lowering the ionization source temperature from 550°C to 125°C improved the analytical sensitivity for some compounds by up to 172%, and optimization of gas pressure yielded up to an additional 53% sensitivity improvement. Through this, the team experimentally identified the causes of errors occurring in the analysis of heat‑labile pesticide components and proposed more precise alternative analytical conditions.

In particular, the study is significant in that it established a basis for simultaneously distinguishing and analyzing the original fungicide components and metabolites generated by thermal decomposition, thereby improving the accuracy and reliability of residue pesticide analysis.

Se-min Kang said, "It was meaningful to experimentally confirm the thermal decomposition issue repeatedly observed in GC analysis and to propose analytical conditions that can resolve it. I plan to continue research to improve the reliability of residue pesticide analysis."

This research was supported by 2026 research and development funding from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (Project No. 25192농축잔006).