Simultaneous determination of simazine, cyanazine, and atrazine in honey samples by dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction combined with high-performance liquid chromatography

A rapid and simple sample preparation method was developed for simultaneous determination of three triazine herbicides in honey samples. The selected herbicides were extracted from honey samples by ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction, separated on a C18 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm id, 5 mu m) using acetonitrile and H2O as the mobile phase with gradient elution, and then detected by high-performance liquid chromatography. The parameters, such as the type and volume of the extraction and disperser solvent, ion strength, pH, extraction time, and centrifuge time were optimized in order to provide the excellent extraction performance. Good linearity was showed for all the target herbicides over the tested concentration range with correlation coefficient higher than 0.994. Three spiked levels (0.005, 0.05, 0.10 mg/kg) were applied for determination of the recoveries of the targets in honey samples in the range of 80-103% with relative standard deviations not larger than 10.6%. The limits of quantification for the analytes ranged between 1.5 and 4.0 mu g/kg. The developed method was applied for determination of the target compounds residues in real samples.