Determination of bentazone, inabenfide and flusulfamide in agricultural products by HPLC and confirmation by LC/MS

A determination of bentazone, inabenfide and flusulfamide was established as follows. The three pesticides were simultaneously extracted with methanol from a sample, re-extracted with ethyl acetate, cleaned up on a silica gel column in 2 fractions (40% and 60% acetone/hexane), determined by HPLC with a photodiode-array detector and confirmed by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC/MS-ESI). In the case of cereals, hexane/acetonitrile partition was necessary to remove lipids before column chromatography. Recoveries after spiking of samples at 0.1 mu g/g were more than 75%, and the detection limits in samples were 0.001 mu g/g by the proposed method.