Determination of fungicide carbendazim in water and soil samples using dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction and microvolume UV-vis spectrophotometry.

This article presents a new and sensitive method for the determination of trace amounts of fungicide carbendazim by dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) combined with UV-vis spectrophotometry. The method is based on the reduction of Fe(III) to Fe(II) by carbendazim, its reaction with potassium ferricynide to form a blue product and extraction into CCL4 by DLLME technique using methyltrioctylammonium chloride (Aliquat 336) as a disperser agent. Under the established optimum conditions, the calibration graph was linear in the range of 5-600 ng mL(-1) of carbendazim with a limit of detection of 2.1 ng mL(-1). The relative standard deviations for eight replicate determinations of 50 and 300 ng mL(-1) of carbendazim were 3.9% and 1.0%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to determination of carbendazim in soil and water samples.