Shimadzu has produced an application note describing the analysis of glufosinate, glyphosate and AMPA in drinking water using a triple quadrupole LC/MS/MS system.
Glufosinate is a popular amino acid-based herbicide and glyphosate a popular foliage treatment herbicide. Glyphosate metabolizes in soil or water to form aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA). In March 2015, the Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Health Service Bureau, Water Supply Division issued a notification (No. 0325 Item 3 - 6) specifying the use of LC/MS/MS for water quality control inspections of glufosinate, since it is one of the pesticides designated for monitoring based on the specified target values for drinking water quality control, but no method for inspecting them has been specified so far.
Results and Discussion
The Appendix Method 22 specified for glyphosate inspection by simultaneous analysis using a
"derivatization - solid phase extraction - liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer" system, can
analyse both glyphosate and AMPA at the same time, which were previously inspected using separate
methods (Appendix Methods 12 and 15) involving high performance liquid chromatography.
In this example, Appendix Method 22 is used to analyse glufosinate, glyphosate and AMPA. In addition, by using the LCMS-8050, samples can be analysed directly without the pretreatment process of concentrating samples by solid-phase extraction.
