Search

The EU food safety policy aims to ensure a high level of safety at all stages of the production and distribution of food products marketed in the ‘EU, whether produced within the Union or imported from third countries. Sodium chloride, nitric acid, and calcium chloride are the only additives allowed in the production of canned tomatoes. NaCl is a dehydrating agent. Its level must not exceed 3% in canned tomatoes. In official analyses, the Volhard test is employed to measure its levels. Unfortunately, this method is very laborious and does not allow the daily analysis of many samples. In this work, to meet the needs of commodity laboratories, which have to analyze many samples daily, an automated colorimetric test that can determine sodium chloride in canned tomatoes was validated in terms of linearity, the limit of detection and quantification, measured range, accuracy, precision, and recovery. The automatized colorimetric method showed precision, accuracy, and recovery (≥ 95%) statistically equivalent to the Vohlard test. Therefore, it can use for the routine analysis of chlorides in canned tomatoes streamlining analytical laboratories’ work.

AbstractThe virulence of bacteria can be evaluated through both phenotypic and molecular assays. We applied these techniques to 114 strains of Salmonella entericasubsp. entericacollected from July 2010 to June 2012. Salmonellastrains were of human origin (71/114) or isolated from food (43/114). The strain set included only the three predominant Salmonellaserovars isolated in Italy from humans (S.Enteritidis, S.Typhimurium, S.4,[5],12:i:-). These strains were screened via polymerase chain reaction for 12 virulence factors (gipA, gtgB, sopE, sspH1, sspH2, sodC1, gtgE, spvC, pefA, mig5, rck, srgA), while antimicrobial sensitivity was evaluated through the Kirby-Bauer assay. Fifty-nine different virulence profiles were highlighted; the genes showing the highest homology were those related to the presence of prophages (gipA, gtgB, sopE, sspH1, sspH2, sodC1, gtgE), while the genes related to the presence of plasmids were less frequently detected (spvC, pefA, mig5, rck, srgA). The Salmonellaserovars Typhimurium and 4,[5],12:i:- were closely related in terms of both virulotyping and antibiotic resistance. S.Enteritidis showed higher antibiotic sensitivity and a higher prevalence of genes related to plasmids.

AbstractThe nucleotide sequence of the whole buffalo β-casein encoding gene (CSN2) plus 1,476 nt at the 5’ flanking region and 51 nt at the 3’ flanking region was determined. The gene is spread over 10.2 kb and consists of 9 exons varying in length from 24 (exon 5) to 498 bp (exon 7) and 8 introns from 92 bp (intron 5) to 22 59 bp (intron 1). Furthermore, highly conserved sequences, mainly located in the 5’ flanking region, were found between this gene and the β-casein encoding genes of other species. The comparison between the obtained promoter and exonic regions and buffalo sequences present in EMBL evidenced different polymorphic sites. Finally, 5 interspersed repeated elements (4 in the bovine CSN2gene) were also identified at 3 different locations of the sequenced region: 5’ untranscribed region, intron 1, and intron 4