Tracing the Origins of Agricultural Products with Barcoded Microbial Spores

The globalization of agricultural trade has greatly improved our access to cereals,vegetables,and fruits.However,complicated trade routes and supply chains make it challenging to trace the origin of agricultural products.This is particularly problematic when the source of food contamination cannot be determined with the currently available methods.For example,a recent recall of contaminated romaine lettuce from North American shelves caused significant economic losses and raised public concerns on food safety before a lengthy investigation pinpointed the origin of the outbreak.A recent study by Springer's team from the Harvard Medical School has described the so-called Barcoded Microbial Spores(BMS)method,which enables safe,rapid,and high-resolution tracing of the origins of agricultural products(Qian et al.,2020).