Selective solid-phase extraction using molecularly imprinted polymer as a sorbent for the analysis of fenarimol in food samples

In the present communication, a non-covalent fenarimol-imprinted polymer was synthesized by precipitation polymerization technique using methacrylic acid (MAA) as a functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker, and azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as an initiator in different porogenic solvent. Binding study of molecularly imprinted and non-imprinted polymer (MIP and NIP) showed that MIP possesses a higher affinity towards this analyte compared to NIP. The binding affinity of MIP was calculated by static and kinetic adsorption study. Further, a MIP based cartridge was designed to use in extraction process, necessary for specific determination and quantification of the fungicide in food matrices. Under the optimum conditions, developed method was found to be linear (R2 = 0.9999-0.9994). Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) in samples were 0.03-0.06 and 0.12-0.21 μg mL−1, respectively. The rate of recovery of fenarimol was 91.16-99.52% on MIPs. The validated method of molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction (MISPE) cartridge was successfully applied to the food matrices and compared with commercial sorbent (RP18 and Oasis HLB). However we feel, this method has promising applications in the routine analysis of food samples in industry.