6. Conclusions
DNA barcoding can be used as a universal tool for food traceability. Even if, from a merely technical point of view, it is not completely innovative, in just a few years it has become widely used. This was ensured by a combination of factors: i) the dropping cost of molecular analyses; ii) the increasing availability of equipped laboratories and skilled personnel; iii) the presence of freely available web-based resources; iv) the increasing amount of informed consumers which require high standards of quality in food products. This scenario generated the request for a technique built around molecularization,
standardization and computerization. In this sense, DNA barcoding is not only up to date, but is the natural product of the 2000s. These case studies and technical advancements clearly indicate that DNA barcoding is a sensitive, fast, cheap and reliable method for identifying and tracking a wide panel of raw materials and derived food commodities (even in the case of strongly processed food products), and for detecting allergens or poisonous components potentially occurring in food matrices. Due to its universality, DNA barcoding can be used in different contexts, and by different operators. International agencies or institutions,which are responsible for quality control of raw materials or food commodities, can cooperate by exchanging their data, hence creating population reference databases, the lack of which is the only real limit of the method. In fact, while some groups of organisms (e.g. fish) are well represented, a lot of work is required to provide a reliable source of reference DNA barcoding data for groups which have been poorly investigated. For this reason, in the near future DNA barcoding is likely to become a routine test in many fields, and in particular in food quality control and traceability.