Quick detection and confirmation of microbes in food and water

The ingestion of contaminated food or water is a great threat to public health. In fact, food and water contamination can result in serious infections, and are associated with high morbidity and mortality. The food and water supply chain need to guarantee the safety and quality of all food products; however, this can be laborious, since it depends on several segments, starting from food sample handling, storage, sample processing, transport, and retail. Essentially, for food and waterborne pathogen detection, cell culture methods continue to be the “gold standard” (low-cost, sensitive and microorganism specific), but traditional methods do have several drawbacks: high time spent for sample preparation, large volumes of reagents needed, and prerequisite of qualified personnel. In order to surpass these issues, rapid, sensitive, on-site, and reliable methods have been developed and implemented in modern food production systems. This chapter will recapitulate available methods, and discuss them in the context of their applications, and possible use as alternatives to gold-standard methods.