Leaching of Triazine Pesticides in Loamy Soil and their Determination by Reversed Phase HPLC

Abstract

The separation and identification of triazine pesticides (ametryn, atrazine, cyanazine and simazine) was carried out on Nova Pak C₁₈ column (150 × 3.9mm). The mobile phase used was acetonitrile-water (65:35, v/v) adjusted to pH 4.5 with acetic acid. The flow rate of the mobile phase used was 1.0mL/min. The detection of the pesticides was carried out at 250 nm. The values of the separation factor (α) were in the range of 1.49–5.32 and the values of the resolution factors (R _s) were ranged from 1.18 to 2.99 for the separated pesticides. The developed HPLC method was used to determine the concentrations of the reported pesticides in the loamy soil samples. The recovery of the pesticides from soil samples was found to be about 50%. The relative standard deviation and limit of detection were in the range of 0.01–0.02 and 0.5–1.0 μg/mL respectively.