Development of Analytical methods for Chinomethionat in Livestock Products

BACKGROUND: The analytical method was established for determination of fungicide chinomethionat in several animal commodities using gas chromatography (GC) coupled with electron capture detector (ECD). METHODS AND RESULTS: In order to verify the applicability, the method was optimized for determining chinomethonat in various livestock products including beef, pork, chicken, milk and egg. Chinomethionat residual was extracted using acetone/dichloromethane(9/1, v/v) with magnesium sulfate and sodium chloride (salting out-associated liquid-liquid extraction). The extract was diluted by direct partitioning into dichloromethane to remove polar co-extractives in the aqueous phase. The extract was finally purified with optimized silica gel 10 g. CONCLUSION: The method limit of quantitation (MLOQ) was 0.02 mg/kg, which was in accordance with the maximum residue level (MRL) of chinomathionate as 0.05 mg/kg in livestock product. Recovery tests were carried out at two levels of concentration (MLOQ, 10 MLOQ) and resulted in good recoveries (84.8~103.0%). Reproducibilities were obtained (Coefficient of variation <5.2%), and the linearity of calibration curves were reasonable (r²>0.995) in the range of 0.01-0.2 μg/mL. This established analytical method was fully validated and could be useful for quantification of chinomathionat in animal commodities as official analytical method.