Carnaroli is a high quality and priced variety, being considered as one of the finest Italian rice varieties due to its sensorial and rheological properties and, thus being a potential adulteration target. The present work aimed at exploiting polymorphisms in the Alk (A/G and GC/TT in exon 8) and Waxy ((CT)n and G/T in intron 1) genes by HRM analysis to differentiate Carnaroli rice from closely related varieties. The HRM method targeting the Alk gene did not allow gathering the Carnaroli subgroup genotypes in the same cluster. The HRM approach targeting
Waxy gene successfully discriminated the varieties sold as Carnaroli from all the others with high level of
confidence (>98%), which corroborated sequencing data. Its applicability to commercial rice samples was
successful. Therefore, the proposed new HRM method can be considered a simple, specific, high-throughput and
cost-effective tool for the authentication of Carnaroli rice, contributing to valorise such premium variety.
This work was funded by the European project FOODINTEGRITY (FP7-KBBE-2013-single-stage, under grant agreement No 613688), the project UIDB/50006/2020 subsidised by FCT/MCTES (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior) through national funds and the project NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000052. L. Grazina thanks FCT and ESF (European Social Fund) through POCH (Programa Operacional Capital Humano) for her PhD grant (SFRH/BD/132462/2017). J. Costa thanks FCT for funding through
