Current Trends in Biotechnology and Pharmacy

The Jammu and Kashmir is a state in India where people are predominantly non-vegetarian, more so in Kashmir valley where meat and meat products are consumed since ages as exemplified by the world famous Kashmiri cuisine, Wazwan, with Rista being one of the predominant dishes. The fraudulent adulteration of superior quality meat with inferior quality meat is a practice that has been observed all over the world. The meat industry in India is largely unorganized; hence adulteration or substitution of meat in meat products is likely to be practiced. In view of such likely problem in indigenous meat products of Kashmiri cuisine (Wazwan), the present work was carried out to study the detection of cattle and buffalo meat in uncooked mutton Rista by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) based Multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method under laboratory conditions. The Rista emulsions were prepared from mutton, cattle and buffalo meat in the ratios of 60: 20: 20, 80: 10: 10, 90: 05: 05 and 98: 01: 01 respectively. The primers used in the Multiplex PCR produced characteristic band pattern for each species by amplifying cyt b gene fragments of mtDNA of the target species. The size of the amplified bands of cyt b gene fragments was 585, 472 and 124bp for mutton, cattle and buffalo meat respectively.

Further, the band intensities progressively decreased for cattle and buffalo meat from mixed meat products with their corresponding decreasing level from 20 to 1%. It is thus concluded that the Multiplex PCR is highly effective in detecting adulteration of uncooked mutton product with cattle and buffalo meat up to 1% level.