A method to accurately and quickly determine milk-derived ingredients in infant formula was developed by the combined use of a genetic detection method for rapid screening and two-dimensional electrophoresis for confirmation, and its sensitivity and accuracy were evaluated. The one-step DNA extraction method based on thermophilic protease allowed the obtainment of DNA just through a temperature-controlled reaction within 17 min, which greatly reduced the sample pretreatment time. The fast real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR) program took only 28 minutes and 26 seconds. The limit of detection of the method was 10–100 pg/μL DNA for cow, buffalo, yak milk-derived ingredients using the universal primer, for goat and sheep milk-derived ingredients using the universal and specific primers as well as for mammalian milk internal reference, while the sensitivity was 1% (m/m) for bovine milk-derived ingredients in mixed samples. Then the samples that tested positive for bovine genes were examined by two-dimensional electrophoresis for whether they contained bovine caseins or whey proteins in order to determine their authenticity. The combination of the two methods can solve the bottleneck problem of difficult identification of milk-derived ingredients in infant formula by conventional testing methods, due to the complex ingredient composition of infant formula.

Foodborne diseases are one of the main problems affecting food safety. The establishment of rapid detection methods for foodborne pathogens is essential to control the biological risks of agricultural products and foods during production, processing, transportation, storage, port customs clearance, sale and consumption. Traditional methods for detecting pathogenic microbes are time consuming and tedious and cannot detect pathogenic bacteria in foods in time. In recent years, with the rapid development of biotechnology and increasing requirements for food safety monitoring, the research and development of rapid detection methods for foodborne pathogens have gained great attention. Although there are currently various methods for detecting foodborne pathogens, unified evaluation criteria are lacking, making it difficult to compare the methods. This article reviews rapid detection technologies frequently reported in the literature and those commercially applied such as chromogenic medium, adenosine triphosphate luminescence, immunological technologies, molecular biological technologies, biosensors, flow cytometry and spectroscopy, and compares these detection methods from multiple perspectives such as food matrices, detection limits, detection time, advantages and disadvantages, as well as requirements for pre-enrichment/separation/enrichment pretreatment steps. Furthermore, the basic principles, main technical routes and key parameters of the various methods are summarized. We hope that this review can provide a reference for technical evaluation and comparison of related methods in the future.

To establish a method to identify the authenticity of manuka honey, this study compared different methods of DNA extraction from mānuka honey pollen, and it developed a DNA extraction method for mānuka honey supernatant and a real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR) method for the detection of plant-derived ingredients in mānuka honey, including plant internal control, mānuka and kānuka. By analyzing the specificity, sensitivity, detection limit and comparing with the method of the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), the feasibility, accuracy and equivalence of this method were confirmed. The proposed DNA detection method could replace the MPI method, not only shaking off the dependence on kits, but also making up for the deficiency of identifying mānuka honey pollen only. It has an important application value and scientific significance for the identification of mānuka honey.