The purpose of this paper is to detect total aflatoxin (AFT) in domestic and imported tea in Amol (north of Iran).
A total of 42 tea samples including 21 domestic and 21 imported tea samples of three popular commercial brands were purchased from retail stores and analyzed for estimation of AFT by ELISA technique. Data were analyzed by ANOVA using SPSS software.
All of the tea samples were contaminated with detectable amount of AFT ranging from 1.5‐16.5 ng/g. The average±SD concentration of AFT in domestic and imported samples was 7.1±2.96 and 6.11±3.94 ng/g, respectively, which is lower than national and EU standards (10 ng/g). The AFT content in 9.5 and 14.3 percent of domestic and imported samples was more than the limited concentration, respectively. There was no significant difference in AFT content of samples of different commercial brands (p>0.05).
No research had been done to detect and compare the AFT content of domestic and imported tea in Iran.
