Developing sustainable biosorbent with functionality for effective extraction of nitroimidazole antibiotics from beef and mutton

Herein, a novel chitosan based hyper crosslinked polymer (Chi-gs-BDCB) was synthesized as sorbent by crosslinking reaction with biphenyl dichlorobenzyl as crosslinking agent after grafting chitosan with styrene. Benefiting from large specific surface area, affluent hydroxyl-functional groups, high porosity and good hydrophilicity, Chi-gs-BDCB displayed good adsorption properties for nitroimidazole antibiotics. Applying Chi-gs-BDCB as solid-phase extraction sorbent coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection, a sensitive and accurate analytical method for detecting nitroimidazole antibiotics in beef and mutton meat was established. Under optimal conditions and at S/N = 3, high sensitivity was obtained with the detection limits of 0.40–1.60 ng g −1 for mutton and 0.33–1.0 ng g −1 for beef. Satisfactory accuracy and precision were confirmed by the recoveries of 81.4 %–116 % and low relative standard deviations of 1.23 %–10.0 %. These data validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the chitosan-based sorbent for enriching nitroimidazole antibiotics at trace level from beef and mutton meat.