Determination of trace amounts of metobromuron herbicide residues in fruits by QuEChERS and DLLME methods

Abstract

Food products have the potential to contain herbicide residues that may pose a threat to human health and the environment, and the determination of these residues at trace levels is extremely important. In this study, a rapid, simple, accurate and environmentally friendly DLLME-QuEChERS method was developed for the sensitive determination of metobromuron at trace levels in coconut-strawberry samples. Mass spectrometry coupled to gas chromatography was used to perform the analysis. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) for the DLLME-GC-MS method providing a highly linear range with a coefficient of determination of >0.99, were found to be 4.2 and 13.9 ng/mL, respectively. Following QuEChERS and DLLME, recovery studies on coconut-strawberry samples showed that the developed method can be accurately applied to food matrices with the giving results close to 100 % and low standard deviation values.