A molecularly imprinted stir bar was prepared using bensulfuron-methyl as the template molecule and methacrylic acid as the functional monomer. The imprinted and nonimprinted stir bars were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, nitrogen sorption porosimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. Extraction time, desorption time and pH value affecting extraction efficiency of the stir bar have been evaluated to achieve the selectively direct preconcentration of the template from aqueous samples. Competitive sorption experiments demonstrated that the imprinted stir bar gave high selectivity and imprinted effect on the template bensulfuron-methyl compared to the nonimprinted stir bar. Based on S/N of 3, LOD was 0.83 nM. The method showed good recoveries and precision, 92.4% (RSD 1.5%, n = 3) for tap water spiked with 126 ng (100 mL sample), 84.6% (RSD 2.2%, n = 3) for soil spiked with 210 ng (100 g sample) and 73.7% (RSD 2.1%, n = 3) for soybean spiked with 250 ng (5 g sample), suggesting that the imprinted stir bar sorption extraction can be successfully applied to the preconcentration of bensulfuronmethyl in real samples. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 122: 1198-1205, 2011