Patent ID: 6878517

Claim:
A method of food product testing, such method including the steps of selecting a sample of a food product having at least one known organoleptic property; preparing the sample for assay; assaying the sample to generate a microbial profile, wherein the assay comprises the step of hybridizing genomic material in the sample to a probe matrix having nucleic acid obtained from a plurality of target species of microorganisms; forming an output distribution representative of the microbial profile of the sample; storing the output distribution in a database; storing data defining a sample profile representative of the at least one known organoleptic property of the sample in the database; and correlating the output distribution with the at least one known organoleptic property, such that the presence of the at least one known organoleptic property can be predicted in another sample of the food product by comparing its microbial profile to the database.