Survey of Commercial Food Products for Detection of Walnut (Juglans regia) by Two ELISA Methods and Real Time PCR

Labeling of food allergens in accordance with legal regulations is important to protect the health allergic consumers. The requirements for detecting foods involve adequate specificity and sensitivity identify very small amounts target complex matrices processed foods. In this work, one hundred commercial samples were analyzed walnut detection using three different methods: a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit based on polyclonal antibodies, direct ELISA recombinant multimeric scFv, real time PCR. most sensitive method was PCR followed by scFv ELISA. There agreement between methods products, except some heat-treated or those that contained pecan. less affected sample processing than ELISA, but there cross-reactivity pecan, producing false positives must be confirmed According results obtained, 7.0 12.6% (depending analytical method) did not declare it, confirming risk Moreover, (3.7%) labelled as containing tested negative tree nut. Genetic immunoenzymatic techniques offer complementary approaches develop reliable verification allergen labeling.