Determination of tebuconazole, trifloxystrobin and its metabolite in fruit and vegetables by a Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe (QuEChERS) method using gas chromatography with a nitrogen-phosphorus detector and ion trap mass spectrometry

Abstract

A new analytical method using QuEChERS procedure by gas chromatography with a nitrogen-phosphorus detector (GC-NPD) and ion trap mass spectrometry (GC-IT-MS) for the quantitative determination of tebuconazole, trifloxystrobin and its metabolite trifloxystrobin acid has been developed and validated. The analytes were extracted from five fruit and vegetable matrices using acetonitrile and subsequently cleaned up using primary secondary amine (PSA) or octadecylsilane (C18) as sorbent prior to GC analysis. The present methods provided sufficient sensitivity as reflected by the values of limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.4-7 and 1.2-20 µg/kg for GC-IT-MS/MS and GC-NPD. The recoveries were, on average, 68-117 and 68-121%, respectively, for three compounds by GC-NPD and GC-IT-MS/MS with intra-day precision achieved with an RSD of 2.7-19.1%. The inter-day precision was better than 15.1% as determined by GC-NPD. The QuEChERS procedure, by using two sorbents (PSA and C18) and the matrix-matched standards, gave satisfactory recoveries and RSD values in different matrices. IT-MS acquisition provided higher specificity and selectivity for pesticides and better limit of detection and quantification. However, the repeatability and precision of NPD method were better compared with IT-MS.

Track of fate and primary metabolism of trifloxystrobin in rice paddy ecosystem

“…As a matter of fact, trifloxystrobin acid is hydrolyzed from trifloxystrobin, which was a major metabolite of trifloxystrobin in plant materials (Liu et al, 2011). To our surprise, trifloxystrobin acid did not accumulate obviously in rice straw in the field trial (Fig.…”

“…The strobilurin fungicides are synthetic active ingredients with similar action to the natural product strobilurin A, which is initially produced by different wood rotting fungi such as Strobilurus tenacellus (Liu et al, 2011;Shen et al, 2014). Mode of action of the strobilurins towards pathogenic fungi was found to block the mitochondrial respiratory electron transfer chain between cytochrome b and cytochrome c1 at the ubiquinol oxidizing site (Qo) of the complex III, ultimately leading to losses of ATP synthesis and inhibition of cellular respiration (Shen et al, 2014), which is also deemed to contribute its broad-spectrum antifungal activity.…”

Simultaneous determination of difenoconazole, trifloxystrobin and its metabolite trifloxystrobin acid residues in watermelon under field conditions by GC–MS/MS

“…There are previous reports on the dissipation pattern and final residues of difenoconazole and trifloxystrobin in some other matrices, such as rice (Cao et al, ; Chen et al, ; Li, Wang, Hao, & Han, ), tomato (Kong et al, ; Wang et al, ), apple (Guo, Li, Guo, & Wang, ; Wang, Wu, Zhang, Wang, & Zhang, ) and many other principal fruits and vegetables (Banerjee, Oulkar, Patil, Dasgupta, & Adsule, ; Liu et al, ; Mohapatra, ; Park et al, ). In previous papers, trifloxystrobin was determined by HPLC (Likas & Tsiropoulos, ; Zhu, Dai, Fang, & Zhu, ), GC with electron capture (Likas, Tsiropoulos, & Miliadis, ) or GC with MS (Paramasivam et al, ), while determination of difenoconazole was mainly developed by GC (Guo et al, ) and UPLC‐MS/MS (Kong et al, ).…”

Determination of nicotine and its metabolites accumulated in fish tissue using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry

“…Food samples were pretreated by a combination of acetonitrile LLE and dispersive solid‐phase extraction (dSPE) to remove impurities in the matrix. Over the past few years, QuEChERS has been used for preparation in the analysis of insecticides in fruits , vegetables , and other kinds of food products . Materials for QuEChERS extraction are often composed of primary‐secondary amines (PSA), anhydrous magnesium sulfate, and C 18 sorbents .…”