Rational design of a novel, ultrasensitive molecularly imprinted polymer-based electrochemical sensor for boscalid detection in grape, tomato, and berry samples.

Boscalid (BOS) is a broad-spectrum fungicide that is widely used to protect plants against a wide range of fungal diseases. The development of a facile, rapid and accurate tool to detect BOS is therefore crucial to effectively manage the environmental impact of the growing use of this fungicide. Here, we report a novel BOS electrochemical sensor based on MOF-modified spent carbon and employing molecular imprinted technology to produce electrode architecture that is highly sensitive to BOS species. The sensor constituents were characterized by FTIR, SEM/EDX, TEM, and XRD analyses. The sensor offers a fast, accurate, consistent (up to 45 days), sensitive (DL = 4.58 × 10 mol L), and selective detection of BOS, even in the presence of interfering species, thereby overcoming the main drawbacks of the currently-employed chromatography-based detection techniques such as complexity, high-cost and time-consumption. The new sensor offered excellent recovery of 97.42-100.08 % in BOS detection in real samples.