Table 2.

Analytical techniques with merits and demerits used for detection in fermented foods.

Analytical Technique	Fermented Food	Toxin/Bacteria Detected	Merits	Demerits	Reference
Culture-dependent method	Stinky Tofu, Chinese traditional fermented food (grasshopper sub shrimp paste), Japanese sake, Chinese Luzhou-flavor liquor, Grape wine, Vietnamese alcoholic beverage	Biogenic amines	Investigation of microbial diversity at the species level	Laborious, Time-consuming, Culture media may not be suitable for every bacterium, False-positive results	[17,40]
HPLC	Cheese, Wine, Cider, Fermented fish sauce, Thai fermented pork	Biogenic amines	Reliable, sensitive quantification of toxins, commercially available	Tedious, Time-consuming	[25,48]
	Red, rose, and white wine, Beer, Cheese, Red yeast rice, Cereal-based ferments, Maize gruel (ogi), Sorghum gruel (ogi-baba), Melon seed (ogiri), Locust bean (iru), African oil bean seed (ugba)	Mycotoxins			[33,34,53,54,60]
	Fermented seed condiments	Bacillus sp.			[82]
TLC	Wine, Cider	Biogenic amines	Effective separation of toxins	Time-consuming	[25,83,84]
		Mycotoxins			[53]
PCR	Wine, Chinese traditional fermented food grasshopper sub shrimp paste	Biogenic amine-producing bacteria	Convenient Sensitive High differentiation	Less sensitive compared to biosensors False positive results	[40,85]
	Fermented locust bean, Fermented melon	Mycotoxins			[41,60]
	Alkaline fermented seed condiments (tayohounta, soumbala, Ogiri, Ugba), Doenjang, a Korean fermented soybean paste, Fermented fish (Pla Som and Pla Ra), Indian fermented pork and fish, Iru, ogi and ogi baba	Bacillus sp., Enterobacter sp., Endotoxins			[28,82]
	Fermented beverages (mahewu and umqombothi)
Biosensors/Nano sensors	Wine, Yogurt, Cheese, Roquefort, Monascus fermented food, soybean	Biogenic amines, Mycotoxins, Enterotoxins, Diarrheal toxins (Nhe and Hb1), P. mirabilis, B. cereus	Rapid, Latest technique, Highly sensitive and allows simultaneous detection of toxins	Not common at industrial scale	[33,35,36,46,53,60,64]