Novel approaches to identify and characterise microorganisms in food industry

Abstract

As far as food industries are concerned, two utmost important and determining aspects are safety and quality; therefore, it is highly important to detect, identify, characterise and quantify microorganisms in foodstuffs with greater accuracy. Modern technologies such as culture-independent molecular methods have solved existing problems associated with traditional culturing techniques. However, each molecular technique offers some advantages and limitations, and it is not an easy approach to choose appropriate molecular method that may depend on the objective studies and several variables such as time to obtain results, cost, reproducibility, etc. Studies on the development and optimisation of molecular techniques are of great importance in the detection of biological hazards in foodstuffs.