Tag Archives: apricot kernels

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Marzipan Or Persipan, That’s the Question

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food fraud, almond tree
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Both Prunus species produce similar flavor and sensory profiles, but have significantly different costs—the 50% cheaper apricot kernels are sometimes used as an adulterant, replacing almonds in products such as marzipan, almond oil or almond powder. A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method shows that the DNA barcode of almond shows significant differences from other Prunus species and can therefore be used to detect adulteration of almond products.

Resource

  1. Uncu, A.O. (March 2, 2020). “A trnH-psbA barcode genotyping assay for the detection of common apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) adulteration in almond (Prunus dulcis Mill.)” Retrieved from Taylor & Francis Online.
Nuts, tree nuts

Q3 Hazard Beat: Nuts, Nut Products and Seeds

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Nuts, tree nuts

The following infographic is a snapshot of the hazard trends in nuts, nut products and seeds from Q3 2019. The information has been pulled from the HorizonScan quarterly report, which summarizes recent global adulteration trends using data gathered from more than 120 reliable sources worldwide. For the past several weeks, Food Safety Tech has provided readers with hazard trends from various food categories included in this report. This week’s hazard snapshot concludes the series.

Nut hazards, HorizonScan
2019 Data from HorizonScan by FeraScience, Ltd.

View last week’s hazards in Milk & Dairy Products.