Tuna is a high-value fish and a popular target for food fraud, overfishing and mislabeling. DNA mini-barcoding, which uses a smaller segment of the DNA, is a useful tool to identify tuna species in raw and processed tuna products. In a study of 80 samples, the identification rate was a promising 86%, and mislabeling was found in 16% of the samples. More work is needed to refine and optimize this method, especially for canned tuna samples which showed only 50% of identification accurary.

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Picture Credit Susanne Kuehne

Posted on 2 May 2022