A Continuous Flow Injection/Indirect Photometric Method for the Detection of Fosetyl Aluminum in Commercial Pesticide Formulations

Abstract

AbstractBecause of their Physico‐chemical characteristics and its composition, the development of new specific analytical methodologies to determine some highly polar pesticides are required. The reported methods demand long analysis time, expensive instruments and prior extraction of pesticide for detection. The current work presents a new flow injection analysis method combined with indirect photometric detection for the determination of Fosetyl‐Aluminum (Fosetyl‐Al) in commercial formulations, with rapid and highly accurate determination involving only construction of manifold system combined with photometric detector without need some of the pre‐treatments to the sample before the analysis such as extraction or separation. The proposed method is based on the reaction between the Fosetyl‐Al with the colorimetric reagent (Aluminon dye) in an aqueous medium of sodium nitrite resulting in the formation of a red complex and its absorbance is measured using the photometric detector. The proposed method included optimization of several parameters such as sodium nitrite concentration, flow rate, sample volume, Aluminon dye concentration, mixing coil and light intensity. The linear range of the detector response was in the range of 0.005–1.8 mmol/L for the sample with r (coefficient of determination) 0.9909, R2 (correlation coefficient) 0.9954 at 95 % and 0.0041 mmol/L as a limit of detection. The relative standard deviation was less than 1.5 % for 0.005 mmol/L of the analyte (n=11). The proposed method was validated and applied successfully for the determination of Fosetyl‐Al in commercial formulations and can be used as an alternative method for quality control assessment.