Abstract

The bare natural fibrous skeleton of Luffa cylindrica (LC) sponge gourd was simply prepared and used as a sorbent in the vortex-assisted solid phase extraction (VA-SPE) of three steroid hormones, estrone (E1), 17-β-estradiol (E2), and testosterone (T) from aquaculture water samples. The extracted compounds were analysed by high performance liquid chromatography with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). Extraction with the prepared sorbent was highly efficient, completing within 10 min. The developed method showed good linearity in a concentration range of 15–1000 μg L⁻¹ for E1, E2, and T. The limits of detection (LODs) were 9.6 ± 0.1 μg L⁻¹ for E1, 9.8 ± 0.1 μg L⁻¹ for E2, and 9.7 ± 0.1 μgL⁻¹ for T. The respective limits of quantitation (LOQs) were 32.1 ± 0.3 μg L⁻¹, 32.7 ± 0.4 μg L⁻¹, and 32.2 ± 0.5 μg L⁻¹. Good reproducibility (RSD < 3.5%, n = 6), good precision (RSD < 6.8%, n = 6), and excellent reusability (n = 22, RSD < 8%) were achieved. Recoveries from real spiked samples ranged from 70.2 ± 0.1% to 98.9 ± 4.7% with RSDs lower than 6.0%. The proposed method is simple, fast, inexpensive, and eco-friendly, with potential applications in the trace analysis of steroid hormones. Novelty statement: Only a few studies have focused on sample preparation for the simultaneous determination of steroid hormones in aquaculture water. The authors believe that the use of unmodified naturally available Luffa cylindrica as a solid phase extraction (SPE) sorbent has not yet been reported. This work successfully developed, for the first time from the bare fibrous skeleton of Luffa cylindrica, a very simple and low-cost SPE sorbent to extract E1, E2, and T for simultaneous determination by HPLC.