The ISO 4876:1980 method (Tobacco and tobacco products - Determination of maleic hydrazide residues), was systematically reviewed in 2011. Two revision proposals were submitted to the ISO/TC 126 from that time, suggesting changing the principle of the official method to be adopted. Whilst the current version of the ISO method is based on caustic extraction and colorimetric measurement, both submitted proposals are based on the acidic extraction condition.

During the annual meeting of the CORESTA Sub-Group Agrochemicals Analysis (SG AA) in 2012, an internal trial showed different capabilities of the tested methods to extract residues of naturally incurred Maleic Hydrazide (MH). Similar methods that were submitted to the ISO committee were tested in the mentioned internal trial.

Due to the complexity of the distribution of Maleic Hydrazide (MH) throughout the tobacco plant, a Joint Experiment Technical Study (JETS) was conducted to evaluate the capacity of YC/T modified and ISO methods to properly quantitate MH on tobacco using both artificially spiked and naturally incurred tobacco samples. The results were published in March 2017 (Project 111 - JETS 16/2). A second proficiency test (JETS 17/1), with a larger number of participating laboratories, was carried out in 2018 to verify the initial results. It was concluded that the YC/T methods were not able to provide equivalent results to the reference methods (ISO 4876) in the evaluated samples.