Abstract: As an important textile material, the cotton’s security is drawing more and more attention. In this paper, we focus on the photodegradation and alkali hydrolysis products as well as the dynamics hydrolysis-reduction of diuron, a long half-life herbicide common used in cotton product. High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was employed for analyzing all the diuron solutions extracted from cotton fiber and photodegradation sample. The result showed that diuron can be completely removed from cotton fiber in about 40 minutes in common scouring condition and the degradation products of diuron in photolysis and scouring process were the same compound: 3, 4 - dichloroaniline. It was also concluded that HPLC can effectively detect diuron residues on cotton fiber with a good repeatability and can meets standard pesticide testing requirements.

Key words: cotton, diuron, liquid chromatography, 3,4-dichloroaniline