A voltammetric screening method to determine ronidazole in bovine meat

Abstract

An original voltammetric screening method, employing glassy carbon electrode (GCE) with the differential-pulse voltammetry technique (DPV), has been developed to determine residues of the anti-parasitic agent Ronidazole (RNZ) in bovine meat. By using cyclic voltammetry (CV), it has been demonstrated that an irreversible cathodic process occurs at approximately −0.740 V (vs. Ag|AgCl, KCl 3 mol L⁻¹) in a 0.100 mol L⁻¹ phosphate buffer at pH 6.5 as supporting electrolyte. Furthermore, the behavior of RNZ in CV indicates the occurrence of a diffusion mass transfer process to the working electrode surface. The RNZ reduction mechanism was proposed as a 6-electron transfer, similar to Metronidazole under the same pH range. Quantification of RNZ and method validation were then carried out by DPV. The relative standard deviation (RSD) were 3.21% for intraday precision of 10 consecutive repetitions and 6.78% for interday precision after five analysis. Limits of detection and quantification were also obtained, and the values were 0.107 and 0.358 mg kg⁻¹, respectively. The recovery percentage for three different concentrations of RNZ in the bovine meat matrix ranged between 98.1% and 100.3%. The method proved to be efficient for screening RNZ in bovine meat.

Keywords:

• Antiparasitic agent
• Differential pulse voltammetry
• electroanalytical techniques
• glassy carbon electrode

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the Department of Chemistry of the Federal University of Viçosa (Brazil) for support and research facilities. The Brazilian funding agencies CNPq and Fapemig are also gratefully acknowledged for the concession of research grants and studentships.