This year's QS Laboratory managers meeting for the residue monitoring sector took place on February 8, 2022. As in the previous year, the laboratory managers' meeting registered a new record number of participants: The virtual event was attended by more than 190 participants from QS recognized laboratories as well as laboratories in the recognition process from 18 countries, even from India and Peru.
At the start of the laboratory managers' meeting, Claudia Rotter, responsible at QS for the laboratories involved in residue monitoring, informed the participants about innovations in the field of QS residue monitoring of fruit and vegetables. In the further course of the event, she presented the results of the two laboratory performance assessments carried out by QS last year. Dr. Günther Kempe (consultant for residue analysis of pesticides and veterinary medicinal products) provided the technical analysis of the results and gave the attendees further assistance and information on laboratory analysis. Dr. Hubert Zipper (EURL-SRM laboratory, CVUA Stuttgart) reported in his presentation about the residue analysis of dithiocarbamate fungicides in fruits and vegetables and gave an insight into the current state of research. Dr. Thomas Class (technical advisor analytics for QS) explained to the participants the analytics of selected active substances such as diquat and paraquat, nicotine, dithianon, captan and folpet using the QuPPe method.
At the end of the event and as an already established part of the laboratory manager meetings, Dr. Kempe gave an overview of current legal developments in residue analysis.
Although we had hoped to meet in person this year, the exchange of information is also possible in an online format. The renewed record number of participants shows that we can also reach the employees of the laboratories digitally in order to inform them in the best possible way about relevant topics,
says Claudia Rotter. However, we are still holding out hope for a face-to-face reunion next year.
