Quantitative method for analysis of monensin in soil, water, and urine by direct combination of single-drop microextraction with atmospheric pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry

A simple and selective analytical method for the quantitative determination of low concentrations of monensin in soil, surface water, and human urine has been developed. Prior to atmospheric pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ ionization mass spectrometry (AP-MALDI-MS) analysis, the samples were preconcentrated by using the single-drop microextraction (SDME) technique. Several factors that affect the analyte's extraction, including selection of solvent, microdrop volume, extraction time, and ionic strength, were investigated. Chloroform-toluene ( 1: 1, v/v) was selected as the extraction solvent. Reliable results were obtained using dibenzo-30-crown-10-ether as an internal standard. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of monensin in soil, surface water, and human urine spiked samples. Under the optimized conditions, the limits of quantification of the analyte in surface water, soil, and human urine were 6.7, 12.4 and 7.8 ng/mL, respectively. The intraday and interday precision variation and accuracy of the present method is within the acceptable ranges. The present method avoids the pre- and postderivatization of weak UV absorbing monensin determination using high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV). Furthermore, these techniques are time-consuming, nonreproducible at trace levels, and form undesirable products. The proposed SDME combined with AP-MALDI-MS is simple, fast, and selective for the determination of monensin in environmental and urine samples.