Optimized imaging methods for species-level identification of food-contaminating beetles.

ABSTRACT: Identifying the exact species of pantry beetle responsible for food contamination, is imperative in assessing the risks associated with contamination scenarios. Each beetle species is known to have unique patterns on their hardened forewings (known as elytra) through which they can be identified. Currently, this is done through manual microanalysis of the insect or their fragments in contaminated food samples. We envision that the use of automated pattern analysis would expedite and scale up the identification process. However, such automation would require images to be captured in a consistent manner, thereby enabling the creation of large repositories of high-quality images. Presently, there is no standard imaging technique for capturing images of beetle elytra, which consequently means,

SUBMITTER: Bera T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8041796 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature