Abstract

Species identification in Mytilus genus is problematic due to morphological similarities between commercially­ significant species (M. chilensis, M. edulis and M. galloprovincialis) and M. trossulus. This problem is enhanced in processed foods in which the shell is generally removed. Actually, due the advances in NGS it is possible to have hundreds of SNP markers for species identification, however big panels are not practical for routine use in small analytical laboratories and also is necessary to test its performance according international accepted protocols for qualitative methods. We select the twelve most informative SNPs for species identification and tested the method in the target species (n = 136) and other four related species common in seafood (n = 80). An in-house validation study was conducted evaluating the applicability, practicability, specificity (primers specificity, definition of taxon-specific reference samples, false positive/negative rate, sensitivity expressed as limit of detection (LOD) and robustness. Also, we transfer the method to a second laboratory and evaluate its concordance by the Cohen’s Kappa statistic obtaining a maximum concordance in the results obtained in both places.