Glyphosate Evaluation of Fmoc-cl Efficiency in Glyphosate Derivatization and Its Analysis Using Hplc-pda

Abstract

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup, lacks chromophore and fluorophore groups, rendering direct analysis by spectroscopic and fluorometric methods challenging. To improve detectability, derivatization is commonly employed. This study evaluates the efficacy of 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC-Cl) as a derivatization reagent in two solvent systems acetonitrile alone and an acetonitrile-water mixture followed by analysis using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with photodiode array (PDA) detection. Results demonstrate that FMOC-Cl remained stable in acetonitrile for up to 13 days, with its peak detected at 10.7 minutes. In contrast, stability in the acetonitrile-water mixture was significantly reduced to one day, as FMOC-Cl hydrolyzed completely into its byproduct, FMOC-OH, which exhibited a peak at 7.5 minutes. Successful derivatization of glyphosate was achieved when FMOC-Cl was dissolved solely in acetonitrile, as evidenced by the pesticide’s peak at 3.9 minutes. No peak was observed when derivatization was performed in the acetonitrile-water system, highlighting the critical influence of solvent composition on derivatization efficiency.