DEVELOPMENT AND IN-HOUSE VALIDATION OF MULTI-RESIDUE METHOD FOR TRIAZOLE FUNGICIDES IN PALM KERNEL, MESOCARP AND RAW AGRICULTURE COMMODITY (RAC) USING GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY–MICRO ELECTRON CAPTURE DETECTOR (GC-μECD)

A simple, fast and rapid multi-residue method for the analysis of triazole fungicide residues in palm kernel, mesocarp and raw agricultural commodity (RAC) was developed and validated using gas chromatography-micro electron capture detector (GC-µECD). The method was developed from a modified QuEChERS extraction method and followed by dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE) clean-up procedure. Five triazole compounds were studied, namely tetraconazole, penconazole, hexaconazole, propiconazole and epoxiconazole. Optimisation of different solvent extractions was conducted in order to find a suitable solvents for triazole residue extraction. The developed method was validated in-house and satisfied the important validation parameters such as recovery, repeatability and reproducibility based on SANTE guideline. The recoveries for all fungicides at fortification levels of 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 mg kg –1 in palm kernel, mesocarp and RAC were in the range of 80% to 108% with relative standard deviations (%RSD) of less than 10%. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for the developed method were estimated to range between 0.12 and 0.23 mg kg –1 and 0.31 and 0.7 mg kg –1 , respectively.