Adsorptive square wave voltammetric determination of amitraz in Argentine honeys with a microwave-assisted sample treatment

The main goal of this work is the development of an electroanalytical method for the amitraz determination in honey samples by quantification its final metabolite, 2,4 dimethylaniline. An electrochemically activated glassy carbon electrode (AGCE) as working electrode and adsorptive square wave voltammetry (ASWV) technique were used. A simple and fast microwave-assisted pretreatment of the samples was presented to accelerate the amitraz hydrolysis to 75 s. The ASWV parameters were optimized based on a “Box-Benkhen” design. The ASWV response was linear in the hydrolyzed amitraz concentration range from 0.25 to 2.50 μM with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.19 μM. The proposed method is a simple and low-cost alternative for the determination of amitraz residues in Argentine honeys samples. Recovery experiments were performed using spiked honey samples with recoveries from 91.41 to 108.6%.