Simultaneous Determination of Avermectin and Milbemycin Residues in Bovine Tissue by Pressurized Solvent Extraction and LC with Fluorescence Detection

A rapid and sensitive method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of four avermectins and one milbemycin residues in bovine tissue. The isolation of the analytes from muscle and liver samples was accomplished utilizing a pressurized solvent extractor. The optimized extraction procedure using acetonitrile/water (40:60, v/v) as extraction solvent, was automatically carried out at 100 A degrees C and 10 MPa, applying two static cycles for 3 min. The extracts were cleaned up on a C-18 solid-phase extraction cartridge and analyzed by liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection after derivatization. Mean recoveries of the five analytes from fortified samples were between 84.8 and 101.8%, with relative standard deviations lower than 10.8%. The limit of detection and quantification were in the ranges of 0.1-0.2 and 0.5-0.6 mu g kg(-1), respectively. The application of the newly developed method was demonstrated by analyzing bovine meat samples from market.