Pyrethroid analysis in fresh tea leaves: preliminary study in building the low volume extraction

Abstract

Abstract Low volume extraction using rotary agitator was used in order to develop method analysis for simultaneous determination of five pyrethroids (lambda-cyhalothrin, permethrin, cypermethrin, fenvalerate, and deltamethrin) in fresh tea leaves. The application of n-hexane, n-hexane with some modifications, acetonitrile, and ethyl acetate were tested to extract the pyrethroids before being injected to gas chromatography coupled with electron capture detector. The experiment was conducted in spike-experiment where known amount of pyrethroids were fortified into the fresh tea leaves and the results were compared to the no-spike-experiment where no pyrethroids were added. Result showed that n-hexane was able to extract all target pyrethroids from fresh tea leaves but the recovery values were low. Meanwhile, acetonitrile and ethyl acetate were able to extract pyrethroids with higher recovery values compare to n-hexane but only acetonitrile gave recovery values that were in the range suggested by European Union. Therefore acetonitrile is suggested as a solvent for low volume extraction of pyrethroids from fresh tea leaves.