Rapid Detection of E. coli on Goat Meat by Electronic Nose

Much attention has been paid on the foodborne illness of food, which is easily contaminated with bacteria or pathogens. Escherichia coli (E.coli) is one of these bacteria that commonly live in the contaminated animal meat. There is a growing need in the food industry for pathogen detection systems that are sensitive to low levels of bacteria, specific to the target organisms, capable of yielding results at or near real time. Both contaminated and non-contaminated goat meat were tested using an electronic nose (Cyranose-320) which consists of 32 polymer sensors. We developed an electronic nose method for the rapid detection of E. coli O157:H7 in goat meat. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method was applied to analyze the experimental data, and the results indicated that they either overlap or are very close making it very difficult for the device to correctly identify. E-nose has a potential for being used as a tool for rapid detection of contamination, although it is not able to detect very low concentration of the contaminant. Keywords: Goat meat; bacteria (E.coli); electronic nose; quality detection