Method Development for Sulfonylurea Herbicides Analysis in Rapeseed Oil Samples by HPLC–DAD: Comparison of Zirconium-Based Sorbents and EMR-Lipid for Clean-up of QuEChERS Extract

Abstract

This study develops a simple, cost-effective and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detector (HPLC–DAD) method for the simultaneous determination of eight sulfonylurea herbicides (oxasulfuron, metsulfuron-methyl, triasulfuron, chlorsulfuron, amidosulfuron, mesosulfuron-methyl, bensulfuron-methyl and tritosulfuron) in rapeseed oil. Extraction of target analytes was performed using quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe-based procedure followed by solid-phase extraction (SPE) and dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE) clean-up, and presents good performance for all of the analytes with recoveries in the range of 67–133% and relative standard deviations (RSD) less than 15%. No significant matrix interference was observed due to the application of effective zirconium dioxide-based sorbent (Z-Sep). Method LOQs for most of the investigated analytes were set at satisfactory low value of 20 ng g−1 in food product. The procedure was evaluated in analyses of actual samples. The most important steps of the method optimization are presented. Novel EMR-Lipid clean-up solution for samples with high fat content was evaluated and compared to Z-Sep sorbent.