TaqMan Probes for Plant Species Identification and Quantification in Food and Feed Traceability

In the last few years, the traceability and labeling of processed food and feeds have gained increasing importance due to the impact that mislabeling and product fraud may have on human/animal health or on the quality of final products, such as milk, cheese, and meat, as a consequence of animal dietary. The presence of contaminants or possible frauds due to the use of alternative plant materials in food and feeds can greatly impact the economy; therefore, they are becoming important targets for product certification by competent institutional services. This is especially relevant when complex matrixes are considered, in which the visual identification of the different components is quite difficult or even impossible. Despite the existence of mandatory traceability requirements for the analysis of feed/food composition addressed by European Community regulations, the labels do not always provide a sufficient guarantee about the ingredients and additive composition of those products. In this sense, the development of new methodologies that aim to assess the traceability of feed and food complex matrixes is crucial. In this chapter, a general protocol is presented for the establishment of quantitative real-time PCR-based techniques based on TaqMan assays applied to feed/food traceability, with a special focus on applications in the areas of food and feed security (e.g., for the detection of plant species involved in allergenic reactions), fraud detection (e.g., genetically modified organisms), and certification (e.g., protected denomination of origin).