Implementation of quality control methods (physico-chemical, microbiological and sensory) in conjunction with multivariate analysis towards fish authenticity

Nowadays authenticity of foods and fish in particular has become of crucial importance because of high number of adulteration cases. Authenticity control has gained ground thanks to the development of several rapid physico-chemical and microbiological methods aiming at distinguishing one species from another based on solid scientific evidence. It has been proven that despite the precision and accuracy of robust analytical and protein and DNA-based techniques, detection of authenticity could not be claimed without resorting to multivariate analysis. This review summarizes both the most advanced and state of the art used techniques for detecting fish and seafood authenticity (both in terms of species and geographical origin). Another issue reported in this review is the preservation of fish and seafood through the implementation of old and novel techniques (ice, modified atmosphere packaging). Several informative tables were included in this paper referring to the employed quality control and sensory analysis methods and multivariate analysis for fish and seafood.