Venera Ferrito

• Biodiversity Journal, 8 (1): 065-072 - MONOGRAPH

  Venera Ferrito & Anna Maria Pappalardo
  Seafood species identification by DNA barcoding, a molecular tool for food traceability

  ABSTRACT
  Traceability contributes to improve food safety giving information on animal species, origin, authenticity, composition and production system. Species identification is an important step of seafood traceability and molecular tools have been proved far superior to all other diagnostic methods previously used. The seafood products are particularly affected by commercial frauds based on unintentional or deliberate species substitutions of low value fish species for high value fish. In this review, we summarize the data concerning the level of fish species misidentification in processed products in the Italian fish markets and strengthen that DNA barcoding is an effective molecular tool to track down mislabeling and food frauds. Furthermore, we highlight the COIBar-RFLP (Cytochrome Oxidase I Barcode-Restriction Fragment Lengh Polymorphism), combining two consolidated techniques (COI barcoding and PCR-RFLP) in a new molecular strategy as a rapid method for routine screening to detect the mislabeling of seafood products.

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