NGS Workflow uses an untargeted screening approach and includes five steps to suit the varying needs of food and beverage analysis. Credit: Thermo Fisher Scientific.

US-based biotechnology development company Thermo Fisher Scientific has launched a complete next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflow that helps food businesses combat food fraud.

The Thermo Scientific Food Authenticity NGS Workflow can be used for multi-species screening and identification for food authenticity.

It uses an untargeted screening approach and includes five steps to suit the needs of continuously evolving food and beverage analysis.

The announcement comes after Oxoid, which is part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, signed a global co-marketing and distribution agreement with SGS MOLECULAR to exclusively sell its SGS All Species ID DNA Analyser Kits and SGS All Species ID Software to the food and beverage market.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Microbiology Business marketing vice-president Bernd Hoffman said: “The growing need to access untargeted genetic information from complex and fragmented DNA samples spurred the development of the Thermo Scientific Food Authenticity NGS System.

“This complete workflow makes NGS analysis more accessible for the routine food testing laboratory and can help businesses combat food fraud more effectively. It truly aligns with our mission to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer.”

The company noted that the solution has been designed to work with the Ion Chef Food Protection Instrument for automated template preparation and the Ion GeneStudio S5 Food Protection Sequencing System to enable quick run times, as well as reducing handling steps.

Additionally, the two chip formats and universal SGS Analyser kits allow multiple library pools across meat, plan, and fish species during the sequence in a single run to reduce the time and cost of sequencing experiments.