The tea specific pretreatment methods for rapid detection of aflatoxin B₁ and ochratoxin A on dark tea samples

Rapid test strips have been widely used for mycotoxins detection in foods; however, their application in tea is strictly limited by pronounced matrix interference. In this study, tea-specific cleaning methods were developed to enable rapid detection of aflatoxin B1 (AFB₁) and ochratoxin A (OTA) in dark tea and tea infusions. The proposed methods achieved recoveries ranging from 81.5% to 128.07% for AFB₁ and ranging from 80.05% to 131.48% for OTA. Method validation demonstrated robust accuracy and precision, with AFB₁ recoveries of 83.82%-110.00% (RSDs: 0.46%-12.74%) and OTA recoveries of 82.83%-118.47% (RSDs: 0.69%-11.74%). The limits of detection (LODs) were 1.14-2.52 μg/L for AFB₁ and were 1.13-3.04 μg/L for OTA in tea samples. The tea-specific clean-up effectively minimized matrix interference, yielding extracts compatible with rapid test strips for qualitative and quantitative testing. Overall, this study provides a simple, efficient and cost-effective strategy for improving the reliability of rapid mycotoxins detection in complex tea matrices.