Chloroplast DNA markers for distinguishing seaweeds and using real-time quantitative PCR and their application in commercial products.

Unlabelled: and , popular seaweed foods in Korea, get frequently mixed in commercial food products because of their overlapping growing locations, seasons, and morphological characteristics. In this study, molecular markers were developed to distinguish these species using a real-time PCR. Six primer pairs were designed for chloroplast genes , , and . R values of all primer pairs were > 0.99, and slopes ranged between - 3.14 and - 3.45, and the efficiency was 94.89-108.39%. Blind test results for 20 samples to verify the applicability of the developed primer pairs perfectly match the blind mixture data. Of the 14 tested commercial products, four products had mixing of a small quantity of species. The developed real-time quantitative PCR assay may aid in the quality control of commercial products of both species as well as the protection of consumer rights.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10068-024-01804-9.