Determination of malathion and its residues by normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography method

The quality of pesticide formulations has an impact on the crop safety, environment and human health. Therefore, the development of new analytical methods for the determination of active substances in pesticide formulations in order to control their quality, as well as, their residues in food samples in order to ensure food safety, is always welcome. A new, simple, precise and accurate normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (NP-HPLC) method for determination of an active ingredient malathion in the commercial emulsifiable concentrate pesticide product has been developed and validated. The analysis was carried out on a LiChrosorb CN (250 x 4 mm, 5 μm) analytical column using isocratic elution with mobile phase consisted of n-hexane and dichloromethane (80/20, v/v), flow rate of 1 mL/min, constant column temperature at 25 °C and ultraviolet diode-array detection at 220 nm. The obtained values for multiple correlation coefficients (R2 ≥ 0.9990), relative standard deviation of retention times, peak areas and heights (RSD ≤ 1.14%), recoveries ranged from 98.97 to 101.62%, revealed that the developed method has a satisfactory linearity, precision and accuracy. Also, the developed method was successfully applied for determination of malathion residues in apple juice samples, after preliminary sample preparation using solid-phase extraction. Specificity, selectivity, linearity, matrix effect, precision and accuracy were tested in order to validation of this method. The obtained results were in acceptable ranges and indicated that the developed method is suitable for routine determination of malathion in the pesticide formulation, as well as for determination of malathion residues in apple juice samples. The run time of HPLC analysis was about 6 min.