Simultaneous separation and determination of eight organophosphorous pesticide residues in vegetables through molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction coupled to gas chromatography

Abstract

How to determine the multipesticide residues in vegetables is an important problem. In this study, a new molecularly imprinted polymer was synthesized using O,O-dimethyl thiophosphoryl chloride, an intermediate for the manufacture of organophosphorous pesticides, as the template. Characterization test indicated that the synthesized polymer exhibited good recognition and selectivity for dichlorvos, methamidophos, acephate, folimat, monocrotophos, parathion-methyl, phosphamidon, and malathion. A molecularly imprinted SPE coupled to GC for simultaneous separation and determination of eight organophosphorous pesticides residues was developed. Under optimal conditions, the linear range of this method was 0.001-10.0 mg/L. The LOD of this method was in the range of 0.13-0.90 μg/kg. With a flow rate of 2.5 mL/min for loading 100 mL, the enrichment factor in the range of 25-480 for the eight organophosphorous pesticides was obtained. The RSD of the eight organophosphorous pesticides based on five replicates was from 1.50 to 4.09%. The accuracy of the proposed method was evaluated by recovery measurements on spiked samples, and good recovery rates ranging from 80.11 to 97.70% were achieved. Moreover, this method was evaluated for the quantitative detection of eight organophosphorous pesticide residues in leek and pakchoi samples.