Development of a New Determination Method for Indoxacarb Residue and Its Degradation Product

Today pesticides, which have increased dramatically over the last 20 years, modern agriculture is used to control pests such as insects, weeds, microorganisms and to increase crop yields, but they pollute non-target water, soil and food, and can also present potential health risks for humans, domestic animals, honey bees and birds. Besides being toxic, they are also cause of cancerous formations. As a result of increasing resistance of insects and weeds to these chemicals, more pesticides have been developed worldwide and have begun to be applied to higher doses. In addition, pesticides enter the food chain in a various way, bioaccumulating in the bodies of living beings and reaching large quantities at each stage as they travel through this food chain. The analysis of pesticides in most of the matrices, especially the foodstuffs, including honey, including honey, is of great importance in terms of correctly assessing how the living beings are exposed to it. For this reason, it is expected that the residue levels of pesticides and the methods used will also include tolerable residue concentrations in current legislation. Although there have been some studies in this area in recent years, there are very few studies on pesticide determination in our country. In our study, a new method was developed to determine the residues of Indoxacarb ((S)-7-chloro-3-[methoxycarbonyl-(4-trifluoromethoxy-phenyl)- carbamoyl]-2,5-dihydro-indeno[1,2-e][1,3,4]oxadiazine-4a(3H)- carboxylic acid methyl ester) and its degradation product in honey samples. After extraction with dichloromethane, Indoxacarb and its degradation product were determined using Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometry. The percent recovery, detection and detection limits of the developed method were 78.7±5.5%; 0.03mg/kg and 0.11 mg/kg, respectively. Samples of chestnut, flower, pine and sunflower honey spiked with indoxacarb were observed at 3 different temperatures for 8 months, and in the fifth month 4- (trifluoromethoxy) phenyl isocyanate was identified as a degradation product different from the ones mentioned in the literature