The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the winners of the 2014 FDA Food Safety Challenge, a prize competition to advance breakthrough ideas on how to find disease-causing organisms in food – especially Salmonella in fresh produce.

The key objective of the FDA challenge was to explore the acceleration/elimination of sample preparation and/or enrichment in the testing process, and/or techniques that employ novel or revolutionary techniques to achieve pathogen detection.

Ist Prize went to Purdue University: “Physical method for concentrating Salmonella to detectable levels using automated microfiltration”. This innovation uses miniscule filters to capture small numbers of foodborne pathogens in large volumes of liquid suspensions.

2nd Prize went to Pronucleotein Inc.: “DNA aptamer-magnetic bead sandwich assays used to detect foodborne pathogens with a handheld fluorescence reader”.This innovation uses small strands of DNA bound to magnets to capture foodborne pathogens, which are then tagged with pigments that can light up and be detected.