Determination of atrazine in soil samples by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

A highly sensitive and specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method is described for the determination of atrazine in soil samples. When the range of determination was 0.05 similar to 5.0 mu g/L, the concentration of atrazine at 50%. B/B-0 and the of detection were from 14 standard calibration curves, in the range of 0.18 similar to 0.24 mu g/L and 0.018 similar to 0.021 mu g/L, respectively. The correlation coefficient of the linear standard curve was 0.9922. The solvent effect was investigated and the standard curves were found to move upward slightly with increasing the amount of organic solvent (methanol). When methanol or acetonitrile solution was used as the extract solvent (with 20% or 10% of water), the efficiency of extraction of atrazine from soil samples was, under optimized conditions, almost 100%. When the 1:200 diluted extract was used for ELISA, mean recovery rate was 99.6%, with the solvent and matrix effects being almost completely eliminated. The developed method provides a rapid, sensitive and accurate procedure for the determination of atrazine in soil, especially premising for screening and quantitation of large amount of samples.