Standardization of SPE signals in multicomponent analysis of three benzimidazolic pesticides by spectrofluorimetry Original Research Article

Piecewise direct standardization (PDS) is applied to multivariate standardization of fluorescence signals using partial least squares (PLS) and principal component regression (PCR) as the calibration models. The multivariate standardization was used to transfer spectra obtained after a step of solid phase extraction (SPE) to spectra registered in pure solvent in the determination of carbendazim, fuberidazole and thiabendazole in water samples. The influential parameters, such as tolerance, window size and the number of samples of the standardization subset were optimized by means of the root mean squared error of prediction (RMSEP). Similar RMSEP values were obtained by PLS and PCR using the optimized influential parameters in the standardization. However, better predictions of the compounds were obtained in test set by the PLS model.