Determination of triazines in infant nutrient cereal-based foods by pressurized microwave-assisted extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry

A method for determining triazine herbicides in infant nutrient cereal-based foods by pressurized microwave-assisted extraction (PMAE), coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC–ESI/MS), is described. The key parameters of PMAE, including extraction solvent, extraction time and temperature, were optimized. The isolation of the target compounds from the matrix was found to be efficient when 2 g of nutrient cereal samples was extracted with 20 mL of methanol for 10 min at 105 °C. Final determination was accomplished by HPLC–ESI/MS. The recoveries from 66.2 to 88.6% were obtained for three compounds at fortification levels (5–500 μg kg−1) with relative standard deviations (R.S.D.) ≤12.62%. Compared with atmospheric pressure microwave-assisted extraction (AMAE), ultrasonic extraction (UE) and soxhlet extraction (SE), the proposed method was more efficient, faster and more straightforward and required no additional cleanup steps. When the proposed method was applied to the aged spiked nutrient cereal samples, the results indicated that, although the recoveries of analytes were much lower than those obtained from fresh spiked samples, they were nevertheless satisfactory for the quantitative analysis of practical samples.