Authentication of meats from chicken, duck and emu using polymerase chain reaction

This study was undertaken to optimise a PCR technique using species-specific primers to rapidly authenticate meats of chicken, duck and emu in short time. Meat samples from all species were subdivided as fresh, frozen, cooked and processed. Extraction of DNA was done using chemical methodology and a commercially available tissue DNA extraction kit. Primers were selected based on conserved region of mitochondrial D loop of chicken and duck, cytochrome b gene for emu with expected amplicon sizes of 442 bp, 292 bp, 229 bp respectively. Specificity of the primers was cross checked with other common meat species. Cooking, addition of ingredients or pressure processing did not interfere with the efficacy of PCR. Results of PCR for meat samples were confirmed by automated sequencing procedure using BigDye Chemistry and comparison of obtained sequences with the reference sequences in the NCBI.