With increased public concern over the freshness and quality of seafood, more pressure is being applied to the industry to provide better products in the market place. Simple, fast, and inexpensive tests are needed to assess seafood quality. Seafood decomposition can be characterized by biogenic amine formation, such as the formation of indole in shrimp. We have developed a rapid colorimetric method using 4-(dimethylamino)benzaldehyde method that detects indole in decomposing shrimp. This method, as well as the confirmatory gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) method, is centered on a simple toluene extraction technique that recovers indole with high efficiency. Excellent agreement was obtained between the colorimetric and GC/MS quantitative results for shrimp decomposition.
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