Applications of NMR in the Analysis of Agrochemicals and Pesticides

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is an indispensible tool for the structural analysis of organic molecules, and NMR spectra are obtained routinely from virtually every compound that is screened as a potential agrochemical or pesticide. This chapter focuses on the more recent applications of NMR in the general area of agrochemical and pesticide research. Many compounds obtained from natural sources, showing a variety of interesting biological activity and studies by NMR are summarized in the chapter. Exposure to the environment or metabolism by living systems has the potential to modify the structure of most plant protection agents. NMR should be an ideal technique for characterizing the structural changes, but, in practice, the limited quantities of material available for the analysis result in NMR being used less frequently for the following degradative and metabolic processes than for determining the structures of new compounds. However, the continuing improvements in NMR methodology are reducing some of the difficulties, and the investigation of the decomposition and metabolism of plant protection agents by NMR is likely to increase. © 1990, Academic Press Limited