Analysis of triazine herbicides in fish and seafood using a modified QuEChERS method followed by UHPLC-MS/MS

A widely applicable method was established and validated for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of twenty-six triazine herbicides in multiple fish and seafood using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). New convenient sample preparation approach based on modified QuEChERs was proposed by adding EMR-lipid to the traditional QuEChERS purification agents. Good separation was obtained after gradient elution through a C₁₈ column. Target compounds were detected with electrospray ionization in positive ion mode and quantified in selective reaction monitoring (SRM) mode. Under this effective method, satisfactory results of linearity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision and matrix effect were achieved. Good linearities of the calibration curves yielded the correlation coefficients higher than 0.996 for all herbicides. The LOQs of 26 triazine herbicides ranged from 0.5 to 1.0 ng g^-1. Good accuracy and precision were shown with the recoveries at the concentration of 1.0, 5.0 and 20.0 ng g^-1 from 70.1% to 111.7% and the precisions of intra- and inter-day less than 12%. The matrix effects (-21.8-27.6%) were almost negligible. Finally the method was applied to the analysis of 72 crayfish samples from breeding bases of Hubei and Hunan provinces (China).