Enantioseparation and Determination of the Chiral Fungicide Furametpyr Enantiomers in Rice,Soil, and Water by High‐Performance Liquid Chromatography

The chiral fungicide furametpyr is widely used in the rice field to control rice sheath blight; however, furametpyr enantiomers are treated as just one compound in traditional achiral analysis, which gives only partial information. An effective chiral analytical method was developed for the resolution and determination of the fungicide furametpyr enantiomers in rice, soil, and water samples. Furametpyr enantiomers were excellently separated and determined on a Chiralpak AD‐H column with n‐hexane/ethanol (90:10, v/v) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.8 mL min^‐1 with UV detection at 220 nm. The resolution was up to 8.85. The first eluted enantiomer was (+)‐furametpyr and the second eluted one was (?)‐furametpyr. The effects of mobile‐phase composition and column temperature on the enantioseparation were evaluated. The method was validated for linearity, repeatability, accuracy, limit of detection (LOD), and limit of quantification LOQ. LOD was 2.0 µg kg^‐1 in water, 0.02 mg kg^‐1 in soil, and 0.07 mg kg^‐1 in rice with an LOQ of 6.7 µg kg^‐1 in water, 0.07 mg kg^‐1 in soil, and 0.23 mg kg^‐1 in rice. The average recoveries of the pesticide in all matrices ranged from 73.1 to 101.8% for all fortification levels. The precision values associated with the analytical method, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD) values, were below 14.0% in all matrices. The methodology was successfully applied for the enantioselective analysis of furametpyr enantiomers in real samples. Chirality 25:904–909, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.