A highly selective imprinted polymer was synthesized by a surface molecular imprinting technique incombination with a sol-gel process. The imprinted polymer was evaluated by FT-IR and static andkinetic adsorption experiments. The results showed that the imprinted sorbent exhibited goodrecognition and selective ability, offered a faster kinetics for the adsorption and desorption of SudanI than the non-imprinted sorbent, a saturated binding capacity (
Qmax) that reached 33.47 mg g
-1.The prepared sorbent was applied for the determination of trace Sudan I through on-line solid-phasecoupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (SPE-HPLC). With a loading flow rate of 1.5mL min
-1 for sampling 50 mL, an enrichment factor of 1266 was achieved. The detection limit (S/N= 3) was 1.2 ng L
-1, and the peak area precision (RSD) for five replicate detections of 0.01
g L
-1Sudan I was 3.66%. The Sudan I in the chilli powder from the local market was determined at threelevels (0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 ng g
-1) with recoveries ranging from 80.31 to 94.02%.