title: Species-specific identification of adulteration in cooked mutton Rista (a Kashmiri Wazwan cuisine product) with beef and buffalo meat through multiplex polymerase chain reaction.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Meat adulteration is a serious problem in the meat industry and needs to be tackled to ensure the authenticity of meat products and protect the consumers from being the victims. In view of such likely problem in indigenous meat products of Kashmiri cuisine (Wazwan), the present work was performed to study the detection of beef and buffalo meat in cooked mutton Rista by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) based multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method under laboratory conditions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three experimental trials were conducted wherein the products were prepared from pure mutton, beef and buffalo meat, and their admixtures in the ratios of 60:20:20, 80:10:10, 90:05:05 and 98:01:01, respectively.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The primers used in the study amplified the cyt b gene fragments of sizes 124 bp, 472 bp and 585 bp for buffalo, cattle and sheep, respectively. It was possible to detect cattle and buffalo meat at the level of 1% in the mixed meat cooked Rista. The multiplex PCR successfully amplified cyt b gene fragments of mtDNA of the target species and thus produced characteristic band pattern for each species. The band intensities of cattle and buffalo in the mixed meat Rista progressively decreased corresponding to their decreasing level from 20% to 1%. Processing, cooking (moist heating) and non-meat formulation ingredients had no effect on detection of meat species adulteration.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The multiplex PCR procedure standardized and developed in this study is simple, efficient, sensitive, reliable and highly specific for detecting falsification of cooked mutton product with beef and buffalo meat up to 1% level.
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Products Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: M Mansoor
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Bhat
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Products Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: Mir
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salahuddin
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Products Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: Imtiyaz A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Mantoo
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Production and Management, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: Sheikh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Adil
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Products Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: Henna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jalal
authors.affiliation: Division of Livestock Products Technology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Kashmir, Shuhama, Alusteng, Srinagar - 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
authors.forename: M Ashraf
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Pal
keywords: meat adulteration; meat species identification; mitochondrial DNA; multiplex polymerase chain reaction