Determination of the Novel Insecticide Flupyradifurone and Its Two Metabolites in Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicines Using Modified QuEChERS and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

In this study, an analytical method for the simultaneous determination of the novel insecticide flupyradifurone and its two metabolites in a variety of traditional Chinese herbal medicines was developed for the first time using high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. A simple and efficient method using dispersive solid-phase extraction was employed for the pretreatment of the samples. Several extractions and cleanup strategies were evaluated. The recoveries (n = 15) of flupyradifurone and its metabolites at three spiking levels were in the range 71.3%–101.7%, with corresponding intraday and interday relative standard deviations of 1.1%–14.8%. The limits of quantitation were 0.01 mg/kg for flupyradifurone and 0.1 mg/kg for its two metabolites. Overall, our developed method was sensitive and reliable for the fast screening of flupyradifurone and its two metabolites in traditional Chinese herbal medicine samples.