Molecularly Imprinted Nanomicrospheres as Matrix Solid-Phase Dispersant Combined with Gas Chromatography for Determination of Four Phosphorothioate Pesticides in Carrot and Yacon

Abstract

An efficient, rapid, and selective method for sample pretreatment, namely, molecularly imprinted matrix solid-phase dispersion (MI-MSPD) coupled with gas chromatography (GC), was developed for the rapid isolation of four phosphorothioate organophosphorus pesticides (tolclofos-methyl, phoxim, chlorpyrifos, and parathion-methyl) from carrot and yacon samples. New molecularly imprinted polymer nanomicrospheres were synthesized by using typical structural analogue tolclofos-methyl as a dummy template via surface grafting polymerization on nanosilica. Then, these four pesticides in carrot and yacon were extracted and adsorbed using the imprinted nanomicrospheres and further determined by gas chromatography. Under the optimized conditions, a good linearity of four pesticides was obtained in a range of 0.05–17.0 ng·g−1 with R varying from 0.9971 to 0.9996, and the detection limit of the method was 0.012~0.026 ng·g−1 in carrot and yacon samples. The recovery rates at two spiked levels were in the range of 85.4–105.6% with RSD ≤9.6%. The presented MI-MSPD method combined the advantages of MSPD for allowing the extraction, dispersion, and homogenization in two steps and the advantages of MIPs for high affinity and selectivity towards four phosphorothioate pesticides, which could be applied to the determination of pesticide residues in complicated vegetal samples.