Ionic liquid-based foam flotation followed by solid phase extraction to determine triazine herbicides in corn

Ionic liquid-based foam flotation followed by solid phase extraction was developed for extraction of eight triazine herbicides, including cyanazine, metribuzin, desmetryn, secbumeton, terbumeton, terbuthylazine, dimethametryn and dipropetryn in corn samples. When the extraction was completed, the analytes were separated from the sample matrix by foam flotation and introduced into the solid phase extraction cartridge. The separation and concentration of target analytes were performed simultaneously. The analytes eluted from the solid phase extraction cartridge were determined by high performance liquid chromatography. The effects of experimental parameters of extraction and flotation were examined. Under the optimized experimental conditions, a good linearity was obtained in the range of 2.50–150 µg/kg. The detection limits of the triazine herbicides were in the range of 0.74–1.62 µg/kg. The present method was successfully applied to the analysis of corn samples. The recoveries ranged from 85.9% to 104.0% and the relative standard deviations were lower than 5.6%.