Determination of active ingredients in formulated plant protection products by UHPLC-UV/MS

Abstract

The market for plant protection products (PPPs) is one of the most regulated. With increasing regulations for registering PPPs, its requirements take more effort and more testing. Meanwhile, there is also an increasing market for illegal PPPs. While legally registered PPPs are thoroughly tested and documented, illegal PPPs are sold upfront without any testing (e.g., tox, aqua tox, eco tox). This bears additional risk for the users, the ecosystem and the public. There are many well established analytical methods and protocols to analyse soil, plant products as well as for food and beverage, but less for PPPs. Many methods need laborious sample preparation and extraction steps like QuEChERS and/or advanced mass spectrometry techniques. Here we present a method developed to identify active ingredients (AIs) which is easy to apply at relatively cheap costs and widely available instrumentation. It provides a straightforward set-up for sample preparation and analysis, without the need for elaborative sample preparation. The method validation showed sufficient linearity, repeatability and specificity to use this method for screening of samples taken from market control for counterfeit or cross contamination checks.