Background:
Fish is a perishable commodity and deterioration in quality occurs during storage and/or transportation to far off places. To increase the shelf life of fishes, formalin which is a carcinogen is being increasingly used across the country. To restrict such fraudulent practices, low cost-easy to use detection methods are needed.
Technology Details:
An easy to use and cost-effective kit has been developed that can detect formaldehyde/formalin in 5 minutes. • It is a qualitative test kit and can detect adulteration of formalin in fish within 5-7 min from 0.1 g fish tissue. • A lower limit of detection (LOD) of formaldehyde using a CIFLIN kit was determined in fish tissues. LOD is 25 ppm. • Detection protocol was developed for use under both field and laboratory conditions. • The reagents used in the ‘CIFLIN” kit showed their optimum stability for up to 6 months.