Residue determination of glufosinate in plant origin foods using modified Quick Polar Pesticides (QuPPe) method and liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry

• Modified QuPPe method was used for extraction of glufosinate in selected matrices.
• MWCNTs was used for the purification of the extract, much better than PSA.
• The sample extract was derivatized with 10 g/L FMOC-Cl at 40 °C for an hour.
• Glufosinate-FMOC was detected by LC–MS/MS.

A sensitive and specific method for the determination of glufosinate in plant origin foods was developed. The method involves extraction using modified QuPPe method, clean-up by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), derivatization with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC-Cl) and detection with liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS). The method was validated on twelve matrices spiked at 10 or 20, 100 and 500 μg/kg. The recovery ranged from 80% to 108% with intra-day RSDs (n = 5) of 0.6–9.8% and inter-day RSDs (n = 15) of 3.0–9.4%. Good linearities (R2 ⩾ 0.9991) were obtained for all matrices. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for the selected matrices ranged from 0.3 to 3.3 μg kg−1 and from 1 to 10 μg kg−1, respectively. The method was demonstrated to be reliable and sensitive for the routine monitoring of glufosinate in plant origin foods.