Establishment of Analytical Method for Residues of Ethychlozate, a Plant Growth Regulator, in Brown Rice, Mandarin, Pepper, Potato, and Soybean Using HPLC/FLD

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Ethychlozate (ECZ) is a plant growth regulator of synthetic auxin for agricultural commodities (ACs). Accurate and sensitive method to determine ECZ in diverse ACs on global official purpose is required to legal residue regulation. As the current official method is confined to the limited type of crops with poor validation, this study was conducted to improve and extend the ECZ method using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in all the registered crops with method verification. METHODS AND RESULTS: ECZ and its acidic metabolite (ECZA) were both extracted from acidified samples with acetone and briefly purified by dichloromethane partition. ECZ was hydrolyzed to form ECZA and the combined ECZA was finally purified by ion-associated partition including hexane-washing. The instrumental quantitation was performed using HPLC/ FLD under ion-suppression of ECZA with no interference by sample co-extractives. The average recoveries of intra-and inter-day experiment