Natural Deoxynivalenol Contamination of Corn Produced in Golestan and Moqan Areas in Iran

Deoxynivalenol contamination was determined in corn produced in golestan and ardabil(moqan) provinces, iran, in 2004-2005. samples were collected from different stages ofproduction, including before harvest, at harvest, post harvest as well as after drying.ground sub samples were extracted with water; each extracted sample was cleaned upthrough an immunoaffinity column. deoxynivalenol was estimated through reversed-phasehigh performance liquid chromatography (hplc). the linearity of standard curve for 50-10,000 ng ml-1 of standard solutions was proved (r2= 0.9999). detection limit was 10 ng g-1.recovery of the method for 1,000 and 500 ng g-1 spiked samples was 73.5% and 93.5% (n=5). deoxynivalenol contamination was found in 76.7% of samples in the range of 54.4-518.4ng g-1. the mean of contamination was 116.25 ng g-1. this is the first report of natural doncontamination of corn from iran.