Determination of strobilurin fungicide residues in fruits and vegetables by nonaqueous micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography with indirect laser-induced fluorescence.

A nonaqueous micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography method with indirect LIF was developed for the determination of strobilurin fungicide residues in fruits and vegetables. Hydrophobic CdTe quantum dots (QDs) synthesized in aqueous phase were used as background fluorescent substance. The BGE solution, QD concentration, and separation voltage were optimized to obtain the best separation efficiency and the highest signal intensity. The optimal BGE solution consists of 40 mM phosphate, 120 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate, 15% v/v water and 15% v/v hydrophobic CdTe QDs in formamide, of which apparent pH is 9.5. The optimized separation voltage is controlled as 25 kV. The resultant detection limits of azoxystrobin, kresoxim-methyl, and pyraclostrobin are all 0.001 mg/kg, their linear dynamic ranges are 0.005-2.5 mg/kg, and the recoveries of the spiked samples are 81.7-96.1%, 86.5-95.7%, and 87.3-97.4%, respectively. This method has been proved to be sensitive enough to detect the aforementioned fungicides in fruits and vegetables at the maximum residue limits.