Molecular traceability of the species origin of meats using multiplex PCR

Abstract

The objective of this study was the designing of a fast and reliable multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) identification system for testing the pure and mixed species origin of meat samples. For conducting this research, different primers were designed for each species according to the conserved region of mitochondrial cytochrome b (Cytb) gene. The results revealed different specific amplified fragments of pure meat sources for buffalo, goat, cattle and sheep species. After mixing different portions of the mentioned meat sources, this method was able to trace less than 10% of the other species of meat in the mixture. Then, it can be concluded that this procedure is simple, cheap, rapid, and efficient, and so it can be used in the meat industry.

Key words: Food adulteration, meat origin species, Cytb, multiplex PCR.