DNA based technology for fraud detection in fishery products with socioeconomic impact assessment (CRP Zagotovimo si hrano za jutri, project no. V1-1808)

With the development of fisheries and its associated manufacturing activities, the entire chain from catch, through processing and distribution to the consumer is extensively prolonged. Therefore, the fishing industry is very vulnerable to embezzlement throughout the chain from fishing or rearing in aquaculture to retail. Among them, the most frequent species replacements (unintentional due to the large similarity of species and hence heavy taxonomic determination or intentional to hide illegal catch or to sell less valuable species as higher valuable ...) affecting product quality. In addition to the United States, the European Community is the most important market in which extremely large quantities of fish and other seafood are sold (more than 1,200 of marine species). According to EUROPOL (2016), fish products are the third most widely fraudulent food. Therefore, the traceability of ingredients is of key importance for ensuring the quality of products from fisheries and for reducing the risks to consumers, modern technologies based on DNA analysis are of great help.

The objectives of the proposed project are to review the supply of fishery products on the Slovenian market and to find out which are the most risky fishery products and species that need to be controlled and verified the identity of the declared species, which species are the most important at the market and the probability of being misidentified. It is also imperative that appropriate advanced DNA technologies (NGS-based metabarcoding, Q-PCR, LAMP) should be introduced to detect falsifications in fishery products.

In the project collaborate National Institute of Biology (NIB), Marine Biology Station Piran (coordinator) and University of Primorska, Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technology (UP FAMNIT). Project is cofinanced by Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) and Ministry of agriculture, forestry and food. Project will last from 1. 11. 2018 to 31. 10. 2020.