Magnetic hyperbranched molecularly imprinted polymers for selective enrichment and determination of zearalenone in wheat proceeded by HPLC-DAD analysis

Abstract A novel magnetic surface molecular imprinted polymers with 2, 4, 6-trisacrylamido-3, 5-triazine (TAT) as a functional monomer was successfully synthesized and used for the enrichment and determination of zearalenone. The molecular imprinting is reported herein at first time for application of zearalenone in wheat. The magnetic imprinted materials possessed excellent magnetism and uniform appearance, which were characterized by fourier transform infared spectroscopy and transmission electron microscope. The results proved the magnetic molecular imprinted polymers was successfully prepared. The magnetic molecular imprinted polymers exhibited satisfactory sensitivity, stability and potential reusability. The binding affinity was investigated by selectivity experiment, which possessed high selectivity. To obtain the optimal application conditions, the amount of adsorption, extraction time, elution solvent and time were optimized. The limited detection of zearalenone was 0.55 ng g−1 and the recoveries of zearalenone were 92.1–96.0%. The relative standard deviation was lower than 5.4%. This indicated that a simple, efficient and low-cost method was established and successfully applied in spiked wheat sample.