Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Fungal PCR and mutated strains

6^th Global Summit and Expo on Food & Beverages

August 03-05, 2015 Orlando-FL, USA

Paterson R R M

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Food Process Technol

Abstract:

Many food commodities are contaminated with filamentous fungi. These organisms affect the organoleptic qualities of the food and/or produce mycotoxins with high economic and health-related costs. Fungi are isolated from food by basic methods and PCR is increasingly used in identifications of the species. However, the PCR methods employed suffer from an inadequate understanding of problems that may arise. For example, internal amplification controls (IAC) overcome false negative results which are the worst possible results as dangerous fungi may be considered safe. However, IAC will not be a suitable control method for mutated strains, as recently been suggested which indicates incomprehension of the issues of mutated strains and inhibition. Mutated strains may arise from mutagens, in food contaminated with mutagenic mycotoxins, produced by co-isolated microorganisms during fungi isolation, added to growth media in the form of antibiotics and self-produced by target fungi. This paper will clarify the issues and offer solutions.