摘要:This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Salmonellae contamination of chicken meat imported from different origin to local markets in south of Iraq (Diwaniya). The bacteria were cultured, isolated and biochemically characterized by the analytical profiling index (API 20E system). The 16s rRNA and invA gene primers were selected specifically for the detection of Salmonella to amplify a 406 and 558 bp DNA fragments, respectively. The results of this study showed that 22 Salmonella isolates were detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from 100 chicken meats and only 7 isolates out of 22 were identified as S. typhimurium, the highest percent of isolates were 83.8 % for India origin and the lowest percent were 25% from Jordan origin .