Development of an extraction method for the determination of avermectins in soil using supercritical CO2 modified with ethanol and liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry

The aim of the present study was to develop a multiresidue analytical method for determination of avermectins (abamectin, ivermectin, moxidectin, and doramectin) in soil samples using supercritical fluid extraction and LC-MS/MS. The optimal extraction conditions for supercritical fluid extraction were 80°C for temperature, 300 kg/cm2 for pressure, 40 min as an extraction time, and 30% of a modifier ratio. The linearity of the calibration curves was excellent and yielded the correlation coefficients (r2 = 0.998–0.999, at a range of 1.5–500 ng/g). Soil samples were fortified with known quantities of the analytes at three different concentration levels (5, 10, and 50 ng/g) and the recoveries were in the range of 82.5–96.2% with relative standard deviation values ranging between 2.1 and 7.9%. The limits of detections and limits of quantitations were 1.5 and 5 ng/g, respectively. The developed method was successfully applied to analyze avermectin residues in soil samples collected from 13 sites in the Honam area, Republic of Korea. In sum, a combination of supercritical fluid extraction and LC-MS/MS has been proven to be highly efficient as an environmentally friendly technique for the simultaneous determination of avermectins in soil samples.