Optimization of supercritical fluid extraction method for detection of fluquinconazole and tetraconazole in soil using gas chromatography and confirmation using GC-MS: application to dissipation kinetics

The aim of this study was to establish an analytical method to detect fluquinconazole and tetraconazole in soil using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and gas chromatography (GC). The optimal extraction conditions for SFE were: temperature, 60 degrees C; pressure, 280kg/cm2; extraction time, 50min; and a 10% modifier ratio. The linearity of the calibration curves was good and yielded a determination coefficient (R2)0.995. The soil samples were fortified with known quantities of the analytes at three different concentrations (0.01, 0.02 and 0.1 mu g/g for fluquinconazole; 0.05, 0.1 and 0.5 mu g/g for tetraconazole), and the recoveries ranged between 83.7 and 94.1%. The intra- and inter-day relative standard deviations were 1.3-10.6 and 2.2-11.9% for fluquinconazole and tetraconazole, respectively. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation were 0.002 and 0.01 mu g/g for fluquinconazole and 0.01 and 0.05 for tetraconazole, respectively. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of soil residues collected from an onion field. The results show that a combination of SFE and GC can be used as an environmentally friendly technique to detect fungicides in soil. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.