A new high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD) method was developed for determination of piperazine residues in food animal products. Samples were extracted with formic acid in water and purified using the PCX cartridge. Following purification, the samples were derivatized using dansyl chloride, and the analyte was separated using water/acetonitrile as a mobile phase. The calibration curves showed good linearity over a concentration range of 20-120 ng/g with coefficient of determination (R(2))⩾0.996. The intra-day accuracy (presented as recovery %) and precision (presented as relative standard deviation, RSD %) were 81-97.3% and 0.83-6.87%, whereas, the inter-day values were 80.5-96.8% and 1.7-6.8%, respectively. The limit of quantification (LOQ) was 20 ng/g, which was considerably lower than the maximum residue limit (MRL). The developed method was used to monitor market samples, and piperazine was not detected in any of the samples. To our knowledge, this is the first study in which the detection of piperazine in various food and animal products by using a sensitive and reliable analytical method has been described.
Keywords: Derivatization; HPLC; Livestock products; Piperazine; Residue analysis; Sample preparation.
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