Residue determination of glyphosate in environmental water samples with high-performance liquid chromatography and UV detection after derivatization with 4-chloro-3,5-dinitrobenzotrifluoride

A pre-column derivatization high-performance liquid chromatographic method for glyphosate analysis has been developed. Derivatization of glyphosate was performed with 4-chloro-3,5-dinitrobenzotrifluoride (CNBF). In pH 9.5 H3BO3–Na2B4O7 media, the reaction of glyphosate with CNBF completed at 60 °C for 30 min. The labeled glyphosate was separated on a Kromasil C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) at room temperature and UV detection was applied at 360 nm. The separation of labeled glyphosate was achieved within 15 min by gradient elution mode. Compared to other pre-column derivatization, this derivatization was performed more mildly, the derivative was more stable, and the detection limits of a few reagents were higher than CNBF, except 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC-Cl) using fluorescence and mass spectrometry, however, this reagent avoid to be removed after derivatization like FMOC-Cl. The detection limit of glyphosate was 0.009 mg L−1 (S/N = 3) without preconcentration and reach MRL, which is set at the level of 0.1 mg L−1 in China. The method linearity correlation coefficient was 0.9999, in concentrations ranging from 0.3 to 48.5 mg L−1. The proposed method has been applied to the quantitative determination of glyphosate in environmental water with recoveries of 91.80–100.20% and R.S.D. of 2.27–6.80, depending on the sample investigated.