Abstract
Grapes are sprayed with an array of agro-chemicals to eliminate the danger of damaging pests that demands a strategic post-harvest storage. Modified atmospheric storage (MAS) using treatments T
0
at 10 °C and `T
0
at 20 °C, both with 0 % carbon dioxide while T
1
at 10 °C and T
2
at 20 °C, both with 10% carbon dioxide, were applied for 3 doses (recommended dose, double than recommended and triple dose) of pesticides on two varieties of grapes under field conditions. Samples were taken at 0
th
day, 3
rd
day, 7
th
day, 15
th
day, 20
th
day, 25
th
day, 30
th
day and 33
rd
day intervals from MAS and were extracted using acetonitrile (ACN) and cleaned up by florisil adsorbent column. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), equipped with diode array detector, ODS-Hypersil C-18 column was used to separate and quantify the pesticides by employing ACN-MeOH mobile phase with a flow rate of 1 mL min
−1
in gradient mode. Mathematical model (Y
t
= Y
0
e
−kt
) was applied on average of all doses, which fitted best to the first order kinetics. Half-lives (HLs-50% of residues decayed) and DT
90
(90% of residues decayed) values were also calculated. Regarding HLs of acetamiprid, best treatments were T
1
and T
2
where T
1
(7.51) and T
2
(4.02) presented good decay at low temperature when CO
2
was used in combination and also reported good shelf stability of grapes. Likewise, the trend was witnessed from cymoxanil and difenconazole pesticides and grape varieties. Moreover, black grape variety indicated more degradation of residues as compared to perlette, which could be attributed to its acidity, composition and anatomical structure. Hence, MAS is a practicable approach not only to enhance the shelf life of produce but also for dissipation of field applied agro-chemicals.