Residue determination of glufosinate in plant origin foods using modified Quick Polar Pesticides (QuPPe) method and liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry

A sensitive and specific method for the determination of glufosinate in plant origin foods was developed. The method involves extraction using modified QuPPe method, clean-up by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), derivatization with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC-Cl) and detection with liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The method was validated on twelve matrices spiked at 10 or 20, 100 and 500 mu g/kg. The recovery ranged from 80% to 108% with intra-day RSDs (n = 5) of 0.6-9.8% and inter-day RSDs (n = 15) of 3.0-9.4%. Good linearities (R-2 >= 0.9991) were obtained for all matrices. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for the selected matrices ranged from 0.3 to 3.3 mu g kg (1) and from 1 to 10 mu g kg (1), respectively. The method was demonstrated to be reliable and sensitive for the routine monitoring of glufosinate in plant origin foods. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.