Detecting Salmonella in Food Samples in Minutes

Salmonella is a food-born pathogen that can cause severe gastrointestinal problems. Purdue University engineers have found a quicker method to detect salmonella in food, which is about three times faster than current detection methods. They developed a machine called BARDOT and it uses laser technology. They first incubate food samples on a plate for about 16 hours and then placed inside BARDOT. In a matter of minutes, the laser scans bacteria colonies and it produces black and white images.

Transcript

00:00:00 Food safety in the United States is very good. The detection of food pathogens, microorganisms that could cause food illness in fact has an excellent record although as we all know there are sometimes exceptions. The government agencies, the FDA, the USDA and industry that constantly seeks to detect food pathogens can identify not only the pathogen but the source of it as well as a type of pathogen and the challenges they now face are being able to do more samples and do them more quickly, particularly as the consumer preferences change

00:00:34 for fresh fruits and vegetables so the time between when a food pathogen might occur and when it is in fact detected will be shortened. So as a consequence they need to be able to process more samples, process them more quickly. Our technology makes it possible to process the samples much more quickly in hours instead of days.