ABSTRACT
Food is an essential part of life. Nowadays, various types of food products are available, including ready-to-eat, ready-to-cook, fermented, processed, and dried. These food products will comfort the modern world with ease of handling. The food products should attain specific physicochemical and biological parameters for consumer acceptance and to assure safety as well as quality. There are various techniques available for the quality analysis of food items. Microbial spoilage and foodborne disease are major issues in the food sector. Molecular techniques play a major role in determining the harmful microbes present in food products by understanding the behavior and mode of action. Molecular techniques, especially the nucleic acid-based technique has become a promising tool to assure food safety and quality. This chapter describes the various nucleic acid-based techniques, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), multiplex PCR, Real-time PCR, RAPD, RFLP, ARDRA, T-RFLP, FISH, LH-PCR, SSCP, DGGE, TGGE, ARISA, Microarrays, DNA based biosensors, and omic technology to assure microbial food safety.
