LAUSR

An easy and quick sample pretreatment method, air-assisted dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (AA-DLLME), has been introduced for the isolation and enrichment of aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, and G2 from rice samples prior to HPLC-FLD analysis. The method has also been compared with immunoaffinity column clean-up (IAC) method. In the case of AA-DLLME, the dispersion of extractant is formed in the absence of a disperser solvent and with the help of air bubbles. Several crucial factors, including the volume and type of extraction solvent, the volume of aqueous phase, and the number of extraction cycles were studied to obtain the optimal conditions. Under the optimal conditions, the suggested technique showed linearity in the range of 0.08–10 ng/mL with low limits of detection (0.68, 0.68, 0.13, and 0.13 ng/g for aflatoxins B1, G1, B2, and G2, respectively) and good sensitivity with limits of quantification of 2.0, 2.0, 0.4, and 0.4 ng/g for aflatoxins B1, G1, B2, and G2, respectively. The proposed procedure was successfully used to evaluate aflatoxins (AFs) in rice samples and acceptable recoveries in the range of 76.0–109.3% with appropriate precision (RSD < 14.2%) were obtained.