Establishment of a real-time fluorescence PCR method for the determination of snail meat components in Liuzhou snail rice noodles

Abstract In recent years, because of a booming development of the snail rice noodles industry, investigations of Liuzhou Quality Inspection and Testing Research Centre have revealed many snail rice noodle products in the market contain adulterated snail meat ingredients. Therefore, we developed a real-time fluorescence PCR assay for the rapid identification of snail meat components in snail rice noodles. The 16S ribosomal RNA genes of Cipangopaludina and Bellamya used as target genes for TaqMan real-time fluorescence PCR were designed. The assay for the detection of snail meat is highly specific, and the detection limit is 0.05% snail meat (w/w). When the assay was applied to commercially available snail rice noodle soups, the samples that contained snail meat tested positive, whereas none of the samples that did not contain snail meat yielded amplification curves. The assay allows rapid and efficient authenticity screening of snail meat components in rice noodles.