Determination of herbicide pyraclonil residue in rice, soil and water using high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry

A quick, reliable and sensitive analytical method for the confirmation and quantification of pyraclonil was developed using high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) with an electrospray ionization source (ESI) in positive mode. In this study, pyraclonil was extracted from soil, water and rice (hull, rice and stalks) by acetonitrile and cleaned with dispersive solid phase extraction using octadecylsilane (C18) and a primary secondary amine (PSA). The limits of detection (LODs) were in the range from 0.00025 mg kg−1 to 0.0006 mg kg−1, while the limits of quantification (LOQs) were from 0.0007 mg kg−1 to 0.002 mg kg−1. Quantification was performed by calibration curves of standards from 0.001 to 1.0 mg kg−1, and the correlation coefficients (R2) were higher than 0.99. The average recovery range was 78.1–112.5% with the relative standard deviation values below 11.8% at three spiked levels of 0.01, 0.1 and 1 mg kg−1 for all samples. This method was used to determine pyraclonil residues in rice, soil and water samples.