Determination of phenamacril in cereals by QuEChERS-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A method was developed for the determination of phenamacril residue in four kinds of cereals (rice, wheat, sorghum, corn) by QuEChERS combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The samples were extracted with acetonitrile, cleaned-up with PSA, concentrated, and detected by GC-MS using internal standard method. The results showed that the linear relationship of phenamacril in the linear range from 10 to 500 μg/L was good, the linear correlation coefficients (R²) was higher than 0.998 3, with the limit of quantitation (LOQs) lower than 0.005 mg/kg. The average recoveries at four spiking levels (0.005 mg/kg, 0.02 mg/kg, 0.05 mg/kg, 0.1 mg/kg) in cereals ranged from 85% to 108%, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were from 1.1% to 10.4%. This method was simple, rapid, sensitive and applicable to the determination of phenamacril in cereals.