Simultaneous determination for fungicide prochloraz and its metabolites in animal commodities with u after hydrolysis

The analytical method was established for simultaneous determination of fungicide prochloraz and its metabolites in several animal commodities using gas chromatography (GC) coupled with electron capture detector (ECD). Samples including beef meat, pork meat, chicken meat, milk, and egg were hydrolyzed with pyridine hydrochloride which converts prochloraz and its metabolites to 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (2,4,6-TCP) because residue definition for prochloraz was ‘sum of prochloraz and its metabolites containing the 2,4,6-trichlorophenol moiety, expressed as prochloraz’, for compliance with MRLs from animal commodities. Therefore, residual prochloraz was extracted with acetone, decomposed to 2,4,6-TCP, partitioned with dichloromethane, purified with aminopropyl SPE and quantified as 2,4,6-TCP with GC-ECD. The instrumental limit of quantitation and method LOQ (MLOQ) was 0.01 µg/mL and 0.02 mg/kg for prochloraz and 0.005 µg/mL and 0.01 mg/kg for 2,4,6-TCP, respectively. The linearity of the calibration curve was good with R²>0.995 in the range of 0.005 0.2 µg/mL. Fortification levels of prochloraz were 0.02 mg/kg (MLOQ) and 0.2 mg/kg (10MLOQ) for recovery tests. Overall recoveries of prochloraz were >90% with <10% of coefficient variation (C.V.). This established analytical method was fully validated and could be useful for quantification of prochloraz and its metabolites in animal commodities as official analytical method.