RESUMO
Salmonella contamination has been always regarded as one of the main issues in different food products especially fresh meat, while its detection time is normally beyond the shelf life of fresh products. In this paper, a 16S RNA based FISH method was developed for the detection of Salmonella in minced lamb meat. The parameters affecting the method including temperature, probe, salt and formamide concentrations, were optimized for FISH efficiency. Then the method was used to detect Salmonella in culture media and in minced lamb samples at the presence or absence of other pathogenic bacteria. The optimized condition included the probe concentration of 50 micromolar, salt concentration of 0.464 M, formamide concentration of 35%, and temperature of 60 °C. The optimized method could successfully reveal the presence of Salmonella in samples with a complex environment. The study showed that FISH could be a reliable method for the rapid and accurate detection of Salmonella in minced lamb, provided that the method parameters are at their optimal values. This method can be suggested as a convenient, rapid, and reliable method for safety assurance of fresh meat.