Molecularly imprinted polymer as SPE sorbent for selective extraction of melamine in dairy products

In this paper, a highly selective sample cleanup procedure combining molecular imprinting and solid-phase extraction (MI-SPE) was developed for the isolation of melamine in dairy products. The molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was prepared using melamine as the template molecule, methacrylic acid as the functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as the cross-linking monomer. The melamine imprinted polymer was used as selective sorbent for the solid-phase extraction of melamine from dairy products. An off-line MI-SPE method followed by high-performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection for the detection of melamine was also established. The mean recoveries of melamine from ultra-heat treatment (UHT) milk and milk powders were 92.9–98.0% and 91.6–102.8%, respectively. Good linearity was obtained from 0.5 μM to 10 μM (r > 0.999) with a quantitation limit of 0.5 μmol/L (0.06 ppm) which was sufficient to analyse melamine at the maximum level permitted by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (1 ppm) in dairy products. It was demonstrated that the proposed MI-SPE-HPLC method could be applied to direct determination of melamine in dairy products.