The Effect of Natural Uranium Bed on Aflatoxin Reduction of Pistachio

Abstract

Nowadays, the separation of pistachios which seem to have aflatoxin is done according to their organoleptic physical qualities like color and etc. As these methods are not fully practical, and there is always a possibility of error and also the conditions like the wrong time harvest, the transportation of picked pistachios, the delay on the processing cause some contaminations in pistachios which do not have particular physical qualities and which are not separable and the detoxification methods must be surveyed. In this paper, the effect of Gamma, Beta, and Alpha rays from natural uranium activity on Aflatoxin reduction was analyzed. Beta and Alpha rays don't pass through the exterior shell of pistachio. Therefore, we need to consider only Gamma rays. So, the Aflatoxin infected pistachios were put into two thick cast iron containers (steam boilers), which one of them included natural uranium soil and the other normal soil and the pistachios were kept there for ten days. Then, the amounts of Aflatoxin in the two boilers were measured by HPLC method and the data were compared. The results show that the B1 Aflatoxin in the natural uranium boiler has reduced from 134.85 ng/g to 72.28 ng/g where as the B1 Aflatoxin in the normal soil boiler has not changed at all. This cheap method on Aflatoxin reduction can cause the increase on pistachio export, improvement of economic situation of the society, reduction of cancer contamination and increase of the society health