Glyphosate is widely used in forestry and agriculture, but is the subject of recent health and environmental concerns - prompting development of this LC/MS detection technique
Agilent Technologies Europe has announced a new approach that makes it easier to analyse samples containing an herbicide widely used in forest management, agricultural applications, and urban landscape management.
Glyphosate has been considered a benign herbicide with low toxicity, but recent studies have raised global health and environmental concerns about its use.
These new findings have spurred the need for a routine method to accurately identify and quantify this herbicide and its metabolite, aminomethyl phosphonic acid (AMPA), in environmental matrices. Glyphosate presents a difficult analytical challenge, however, because the compound is highly polar, which means that organic solvents cannot extract them from environmental matrices. Traditional analytical methods for this analysis have various drawbacks, chiefly their complexity and high cost.
They are also dependent to some extent on art, skill and experience, which makes them unsuitable for routine analyses.
Agilent Technologies has demonstrated a simple, analytical approach to detect glyphosate.
Liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) with electrospray ion source can detect 10 to 50ppb - given a 100ml water sample.
Both glyphosate and AMPA can be readily and easily detected in positive or negative ion modes.
Agilent studies measured amounts as low as 20ng on column for glyphosate and 10ng for AMPA.
For further information, request application note 'Analysis of Glyphosate and Aminomethyl Phosphonic Acid by Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry,' Agilent publication number 5988-4981EN.
This note is available without charge from any Agilent sales office or its website (details above).
