Abstract: It is critical to determine the biological identity of all ingredients in food to ensure its safety and quality. Modern gene detection technology makes species identification in food more accurate, sensitive and rapid. A comprehensive review on its current applications in the last decade and the future perspective in food species identification is presented, including a brief introduction of gene detection methods, and their applications in plant-originated food, animal-originated food, high value-added food and highly processed food.

Key words: food, gene detection technology, species identification