A simple assay for analyzing residues of carbaryl insecticide in buffalo meat by liquid chromatography–photodiode array detection

A simple and sensitive liquid chromatographic (LC) method was developed for determination of carbaryl residue in buffalo meat samples. This method is based on a solid-phase extraction technique followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-photo-diode-array (PDA) detection. Meat samples (0.5 g) were deproteinized by adding acetonitrile followed by centrifugation and filtration. The analyte was separated on a reverse-phase (RP-C18) column using isocratic elution. Acetonitrile along with water appears to be an excellent extractant as recovery of the analyte in spiked sample at maximum residue level (MRL) was 98.5%, with coefficient of variation (CV) of 4.97%. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of the method was 0.015 and 0.03 μg g-1, respectively. The linearity of the carbaryl was 0.9992. Excellent method repeatability and reproducibility were also observed by intra- and inter-day assay precision. For robustness, the method was employed to analyze 122 buffalo meat samples, and intensities for the insecticide were found to be unaffected by the sample matrices interference.