Zanella_2000_Pest.Manag.Sci_56_804

A flow injection spectrophotometric method for the determination of carbofuran in commercial pesticide formulations was developed. The determination involves on-line hydrolysis of the extracted carbofuran at room temperature with sodium hydroxide. The resulting carbofuran-phenol is coupled with diazotized 4-aminobenzoic acid in order to achieve an appropriate selectivity and sensitivity for the spectrophotometric measurements. The calibration curve is linear over the range 1-10mg litre-1 of carbofuran. The proposed method has a detection limit of 0.15mg litre-1 of carbofuran and a sample frequency of 120 injections per hour. The relative standard deviation of six independent determinations of a sample containing 1mg litre-1 carbofuran was 0.6%. The suitability of the proposed procedure for the determination of carbofuran in commercial pesticide formulations was studied. The procedure provides results comparable to those obtained by liquid chromatographic analysis.