High performance liquid chromatographic determination of cyromazine and its derivative melamine in poultry meats and eggs

A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with NH2 column and 75% acetonitrile eluate to determine the insecticide cyromazine residues in poultry meats and eggs was developed. Samples were treated with NaOH, extracted with acetonitrile containing 20% concentrated NH4OH, and cleaned up through C18 Sep-Pak cartridge. The peaks of cyromazine and its metabolite melamine were successfully separated within 12 min and cleanly differentiated from interfering peaks of the samples. The detection limit of both compounds was 0.02 ppm. Recoveries of cyromazine and melamine ranged from 92.8-97.3% and 91.0-96.1% at fortified levels of 0.2-0.7 ppm, respectively. Each reaction coefficient of linear standard curve of cyromazine and melamine was better than 0.999. Using this HPLC determination, only one beef sample from 46 tested samples was detected to contain 0.04 ppm cyromazine. This was further confirmed by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy.