A simple method for the determination of carbaryl and 1-naphthol in fruit juices by high-performance liquid chromatography-diode-array detection.

Carbaryl (Sevin) is a widely used N-methylcarbamate insecticide. In this study, a simple and sensitive reversed-phase, high-performance liquid chromatography method with diode-array detection has been developed for the determination of low levels of carbaryl and its degradation products 1-naphthol in several kinds of canned pure fruit juice. The compounds were captured on a C18 cartridge. The analytes were separated on a C18 column using a linear gradient of 40 to 60% acetonitrile in water in a period of 20 min. The extraction recoveries of carbaryl and 1-naphthol were in the range 93.5 to 98.0% and 90.7 to 96.0% for fruit juice, respectively. The detection limit was below 0.8 ng/ml and the calibration curves showed good linearity between 0.9998 and 0.9999.