Abstract
The resolving power of liquid chromatography and partial least-square (PLS-1) calibration has been compared for simultaneous analysis of three leachable pesticides, atrazine, methidathion, and propoxur, in groundwater. The chromatographic method outperformed PLS-1 for analysis of the pesticides, for which spectral overlap is substantial (30–75%). After application of a liquid–liquid extraction step, both methods could be used to quantify 500 ng L−1 of the pesticides with recovery in the ranges 92.8–95.6% for PLS-1 and 97.6–99.3% for chromatography, and RSD in the ranges 6.9–8.6% for PLS-1 and 1.9–3.4% for chromatography. The better performance of the chromatographic method was attributed to separation of groundwater constituents from the pesticides before quantification, which was not possible with the PLS-1 method. Despite the superiority of the chromatographic method, PLS-1 seems a reasonable and inexpensive substitute for chromatography.
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