Development of a new automatic on-site detector of pesticides in natural waters by photo induced fluorescence, application to three phenylurea and benzoylurea herbicide.

Prototypes of on-site automatic photo induced fluorescence detectors of pesticide in natural waters are set up and applied for the determination of the benzoyl- and phenylurea pesticides, namely fluometuron, monolinuron and diflubenzuron. As these pesticides present no native fluorescence the set up system use the photo conversion under UV irradiation of these pesticides into highly fluorescent photoproducts. A first system, called AUTOPIF, (evolution the commercial AQUAPOD system) is develop using a detection via a diode array spectrometer. To improve the sensitivity of the method, a second system, called AUTOPIF+, is developed with a more resolute spectrometer and an intensified CCD camera detection. Analytical applications were carried out in aqueous solution and detected on line with the AUTOPIF and AUTOPIF+ system. The calibration curves are linear over one order of magnitude, and the limits of detection are in the μg mL range. The analytical performances of these methods for the determination of the three pesticides are satisfactory in comparison to other classical PIF methods published for the determination of phenylurea pesticides in aqueous solutions. Our results show that the AUTOPIF and AUTOPIF+ methods are versatile, sensible and can be easily applied as an alert system to detect pollutant residues in naturals waters over a threshold value.