“…This process can be strengthened depending on the soil pH and strong acidic media (pH < 5.5) favors the absorption of metallic species by the roots [19,44]. However, other factors may also impact the levels of trace elements in tea plants, such as leaves age, sunlight exposure, moisture, genetics, region of cultivation, use of fertilizer and pesticides containing Mn in their composition (dithiocarbamate fungicides), pollutants, air pollution, among others [19,21,43,45]. Therefore, these mentioned factors could account for the differences in total Mn contents found in the RM and GM samples and in the hot infusions of mate analyzed in this work (Table 1).…”