Capacity Building for Beef Safety and Digital PCR Research and Training

Salmonella strains that are pathogenic to humans contribute to1.35 million cases annually. One overlooked issue associated with the high number of Salmonella infections is that the commonly used testing approach relies on "presence/ absence" testing of food enrichments and ignores the pathogen concentration in the contaminated samples. Knowing the Salmonellaconcentration in food samples and the Salmonella serovarsis crucial for making informed regulatory decisions. The goalof our researchis to accelerate the development of robust foodborne pathogen detection and estimation workflows that can be adopted by regulatory agencies and other food testing laboratories. The objectives of this project are as follows: The objective one is to optimize amultiplex digital PCR assay for absolute quantification of Salmonella and simultaneous identification of contaminating Enteritidis and Typhimurium strains. The objective two is to validate the standardized multiplex digital PCR assay using laboratory-inoculated beef samples.