Comparative Evaluation of Different Extraction Methods for Identification and Quantification of Glyphosate in Fortified Corn Flour

Abstract

Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides around the world. Over the past decade, the use of glyphosate and related molecules has significantly risen despite its suggested harmful effects on human health. Therefore, it is of great interest to establish reliable and scalable extraction and quantification pipelines for glyphosate in food-associated products. This herbicide is difficult to detect in foods and related matrices because of its chemical features. In this work, we tested different concentrations of solvents and various extraction protocols for recovering this pesticide. For quantification, we used a dynamic multiple reaction monitoring (dMRM) method in an ultra-high resolution liquid chromatograph coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (UPLC-MS-QqQ). We determined that 20 % (v/v) methanol in water was the best solvent for extraction. Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) and ultrasonication approach allowed better recovery values. However, extraction with the energized dispersive extraction system (EDGE) exhibited a more efficient result in half of the time compared to the other automated protocol tested in our study. Our investigation provides valuable information for the extraction, identification, and quantification of glyphosate-2-13C, which will contribute to monitoring the level of this herbicide in corn flour.