Green near-infrared determination of copper and mancozeb in pesticide formulations

A green analytical procedure has been successfully developed for the simultaneous determination of copper and mancozeb in phytosanitary products. The method is based on different direct measurements of diffuse reflectance near-infrared (DR-NIR) spectra. Accuracy of the method has been evaluated by comparison of the obtained copper and mancozeb concentrations with those provided by reference methodologies based on titrimetric procedures. The average relative prediction error was 0.7 and 1.6 % for copper and mancozeb, respectively. The evaluation of the greenness of the DR-NIR procedure provided 100 points, which is the maximum value in the Green Certificate ranking, because of the absence of consumed reagents and waste generation and energy consumption lower than 0.1 kWh.