Determination of Carbendazim in Orange Juice Using QuEChERS and LC/MS/MS

The planar fungicide carbendazim (CASRN 10605-21-7) can be used to control mold on citrus crops but is not approved for use in the US or on imported products. Concentrations in citrus products can be rapidly and accurately determined using QuEChERS extraction with dSPE clean-up.

Extraction Procedure

a) Add 10 mL of juice to a 50 mL centrifuge tube

b) Add 10 mL acetonitrile then vortex

c) Add the contents of salt pack ECQUEU750CT-MP

d) Shake vigorously for 1 min

e) Centrifuge at 5000 rpm for 5 min at 20 °C

f) Sample is ready for clean-up

Dispersive Clean-up

a) Add 1 mL of supernatant to CUMPSC18CT tube

b) Shake sample(s) for 1 min

c) Centrifuge at 10000 rpm for 5 min

d) Transfer 0.5 mL to 2 mL autosampler vial

e) Add 25 µL 1 ppm TPP, vortex

f) Samples are ready for analysis

Conclusion

Carbendazim is recovered in high yield and excellent precision from orange juice using this simple, rapid QuEChERS procedure. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for this method are determined to be 0.4 and 1.4 ng/mL, respectively.

Figure 1: Matrix matched calibration curve.

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