Simultaneous stereoselective detection of chiral fungicides in soil by LC-MS/MS with fast sample preparation

An enantioselective method was developed for the simultaneous detection of five chiral fungicides in soil, including fenbuconazole (1), tetraconazole (2), nuarimol (3), triticonazole (4), and simeconazole (5) by LC-MS/MS on a chiral stationary phase of cellulose tris-(3-chloro-4-methylphenylcarbamate) with a gradient elution. A new multifunctional filter was designed to simplify the QuEChERS (where QuEChERS is quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) method by simultaneous cleanup and filtration when the sample extracts were directly passed through it. Good linearities (R2 > 0.9980) were obtained in the range 0.005-2.5 mg/L, and the recovery rates were 77.4-103.6% with RSDs of 0.7-12.2% for intraday precision and 1.2-11.0% for interday precision. The LODs and LOQs for all enantiomers were in the range 0.1-0.2 and 0.25-0.5 μg/kg, respectively. The analysis of the incubated soil suggests that this method is reliable and practical for the stereoselective detection of chiral fungicides.