Aflatoxin B1 [FITC]

This review focuses on factors associated with mold production in feed-stuffs and major mycotoxins affecting ruminants in North America. Ruminants are often considered less sensitive to mycotoxins owing to rumen microflora metabolism to less toxic compounds. However, ruminants occupy wide agricultural niches that expose animals to diverse toxins under widely different environmental and nutritional conditions. Often the moldy and potentially highly contaminated feeds end up at feedlots. Less than optimal feedstuffs creating suboptimal rumen microbial flora could result in decreased ruminal capacity to detoxify certain mycotoxins and adverse effects. Numerous mycotoxins and clinical effects in ruminants are discussed.

Mycotoxin contaminations of tea have been considered serious problems. The presence of interfering substances presents enormous challenges to accurate detection of hazardous analyzes in tea soups. In this work, we have carefully predicted, evaluated, and confirmed the matrix effects in tea that have an undesired influence on the detection of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in tea soups by lateral flow test strips (LFTS). After pretreatment of tea samples by simple dilution to change the acidic tea soups to alkaline environments, the matrix effects can be completely eliminated and the reliability of AFB1 analysis in tea soups can be effectively guaranteed. AFB1 contaminated samples of different tea soups can be accurately measured with detection limits down to 0.05 ppb. As the first pioneering report to study the matrix effects on AFB1 monitoring in tea soups by LFTS, we definitely expect this work to further widen the application of LFTS for hazard screening in food safety.