In July 2010 a one week hands-on training was given at the State Phytosanitary Laboratory in Skopje as part of a knowledge transfer programme instituted by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The aim was to give practical advise, perform troubleshooting and to assist in the implementation of a pesticide multi-method according to ISO 17025 criteria.
During this week the following activities took place:
- Solving basic GC-MS problems, such as leakages, bad connections, improper instrument configurations etc. The instrument turned out to be badly installed by the local technicians of the instrument company.
All problems were solved together with the local analysts meaning that the process of problem solving and training was combined.
- Optimising the instrumental configuration, developing data acquisition and data processing methods and fine-tuning the analytical conditions.
- Samples were fortified and processed using a dedicated sample pretreatment procedure (tailor made for the available equipment) in an attempt to perform a first validation of the method. After a second set of experiments the first samples at low fortification contents were analysed.
