Electrochemical Determination of Trifluralin Herbicide Using Silver Solid Amalgam Electrode: Application in Fresh Food Samples

This paper reports the use of polished silver solid amalgam electrode (p-AgSAE) allied to square wave voltammetry (SWV) in the development of a simple, sensitive, fast and green electroanalytical methodology for the trifluralin herbicide determination in fresh food samples. The experimental (supporting electrolyte and potential and time accumulation) and voltammetric (pulse frequency, pulse amplitude and scan increment potential) parameters were previously optimized, which were employed in the construction of analytical curves. Therefore, these curves have enabled the calculation of analytical parameters (linearity range, equation of the analytical curves, coefficients of determination, limits of detection and quantification, recovery efficiency, and relative standard deviations for intraday and interday experiments) and they indicated that the use of the p-AgSAE is suitable for determining any contamination by trifluralin. So, the proposed methodology had to minimize the toxic residues due to the use of liquid mercury or the adsorbed products from the redox reaction that promotes passivation in the other solid surfaces. Furthermore, the optimized methodology was used to trifluralin determination in eggplant, carrot, tomato, grape juice and orange juice, and the results indicated that the proposed methodology presented high robustness, stability and sensitivity, good reproducibility, and hence it is applicable for complex samples.