Determination of Dicamba Residues in Milk by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

The objective of this study was to establish a method for detecting the residue of dicamba in cow milk by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). The sample was extracted with 0.5% formic acid in acetonitrile, and the extract was purified by sodium chloride salting out, and separated on an Acquity UPLC BEH C₁₈ column (100 mm × 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) by gradient elution using a mobile phase composed of acetonitrile and 0.01% formic acid aqueous solution. Identification and quantification were achieved using an electrospray ionization source in the negative ion mode with multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). Under optimized pretreatment and instrumental conditions, good linearity was observed in the concentration range of 5.0–250.0 μg/L with correlation coefficient (r) more than 0.999. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of the proposed method were 5 and 10 μg/kg, respectively. The recoveries of dicamba at spiked concentration levels of 10, 20 and 200 µg/kg were 104.3%, 101.5% and 96.2% with relative standard deviations (n = 6) of 3.0%, 2.0% and 1.5%, respectively. This method is simple, accurate, repeatable, and suitable for the rapid detection of dicamba in milk.