Draft summary

This document specifies a method for the taxonomic identification of single crustaceans to the genus or species level using DNA barcoding. It allows the identification of a large number of commercially important crustacean species. This method was validated on raw crustaceans. Laboratory experience indicates additional applicability to processed crustacean products, e.g. cold smoked, hot smoked, salted, frozen, cooked, fried and deep-fried samples. The described method is usually unsuitable for the analysis of highly processed foods, e.g. tins of crustaceans, with highly degraded DNA where the fragment lengths are not sufficient for amplification of the targets. Furthermore, it is not applicable for complex seafood products containing mixtures of two or more crustacean species. The identification of crustacean species is carried out by PCR amplification of either a shorter or longer segment of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene, or a segment of the cytochrome c oxidase I gene (cox1, syn. COI) or any combination of the three markers, followed by sequencing of the PCR products and subsequent sequence comparison with entries in databases.