Current World Environment Vol. 8(3), 469-472 (2013) Thin-Layer Chromatography: Comparative Estimation of Soil's Atrazine VIJAY KUMAR 2 , NIRAJ UPADHYAY 2 , SIMRANJEET SINGH 1 , JOGINDER SINGH 1 and PARVINDER KAUR 1 1 Department of Biochemistry, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. 2 Department of Chemistry, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. http://dx.doi.org/10.12944/CWE.8.3.17 (Received: September 17, 2013; Accepted: October 23, 2013) ABSTRACT Herbicide atrazine is a broad spectrum herbicide, used worldwide to protect the crops from weeds, but overuse of atrazine have caused the huge environmental problems from few decades. So it is very essential to study and develop the lab based analytical methods, which are important for the detection of atrazine in environment as well as in biological media. In this study we have collected the soils samples from farm fields and extracted the atrazine by Soxhlet method. Also we have extracted the atrazine from formulated grade considered as standard/pure sample in our study. Both extracted/standard and atrazine samples were characterized by UV and FTIR analysis. Further thin layer chromatography was run to check the purity of soil extracted sample. Key words: Atrazine, Analytical Methods, TLC, UV, FTIR. INTRODUCTION Atrazine (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6- isopropylamino-striazine), is probably the most commonly used chlorinated herbicide in the world 1 .Atrazine is a selective systemic and most popular herbicide introduced in 1958 by J.R. Geigy. It has a range of trade names including Marksman, Coyote, Atrazina, Atrazol and Vectal. Atrazine is used for the pre and post-emergence control of annual and broad leaved weeds and perennial grasses; it inhibits photosynthesis and interferes with other enzymic processes. 1,2 It is mainly absorbed through the plant roots, but can enter through the foliage, and accumulates in the apical meristems and leaves. Globally, atrazine is used in the production of maize, sorghum, sugar cane, pineapples, chemical fallows, grassland, macadamia nuts, conifers, and for industrial weed control, with its biggest market in maize production 2 . The structure and physicochemical properties of atrazine are mentioned in Table 1 1,2 . As per literature atrazine having quite persistent in environment and is toxic to various living organisms 2 Number of methods have been described for the determination of atrazine in environment and biological media including, water and soils 3-7 Here we have reported the TLC based study, in this study, we have collected the atrazine contained soils samples from farm fields and extracted the atrazine from these soils samples by Soxhlet method. Also we have extracted the atrazine from formulated grade considered as standard/pure sample in our study. Both extracted/ standard sample and atrazine samples were characterized by UV and FTIR spectroscopy. Further thin layer chromatography was run to check the purity of soil extracted sample. EXPERIMENTAL TLC plates were prepared by pasting silica slurry on glass plates and dried at 150°C for 3 hours. TLC study was done in solvent system methanol- water (80:20). The soil samples were collected in zip bags from Phagwara City located in the North region of the India and Formulated atrazine, Tagtaf - 50 (Atrazine 50% WP) packets was purchase from local market. This sample area is representative of