Title: Novel molecular approaches for the rapid detection of Salmonella from pork products and the pork

Novel rapid, sensitive, and simple detection assays that can be routinely used to prevent the transmission of Salmonella in the pork industry are in high-demand. Reverse-transcriptase Loop-mediated isothermal Amplification (RT-LAMP) assay is a novel molecular method that has advantages over real-time reversetranscriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) in that it does not require expensive equipment such as a realtime PCR machine as the reaction occurs in a waterbath at one temperature and detection is by turbidity or fluorescence after 2 h. The objectives of this research were to develop and apply novel assays such as RT-LAMP and RT-PCR to pork products and the pork environment for the rapid and sensitive detection of Salmonella Typhimurium and for comparison to traditional cultural methods. Another objective was to apply the RT-LAMP assay to detect Salmonella from pork products obtained from grocery stores and from pork processing facilities to test the suitability of the novel assays for routine testing by the pork industry in real-world scenarios. Twenty-five gram pork chop, pork sausage, and ground pork samples were spiked with S. Typhimurium at high (10 8 to 10 6