Sunday, July 26, 2009
P41

Effects of Refrigeration on the Detection Method of Salmonella in some Selected Foods

Dilini Lanka Wijeratne1, Dr.Thamara Weerasinghe1, and Sajeewika Perera2. (1) Botany, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, (2) Chemical & Microbiology, Industrial Technology Institute, Vidaya Mawatha, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka

Detection of Salmonella in food before consumed is an important aspect of food hygiene as it is pathogenic. The presence of Salmonella has been tested by culture methods over the years under laboratory conditions. The standard culture techniques take about three to five days continuously and also complicated, labor intensive, and sometimes cannot continue due to technical problems. Therefore rapid detection methods have been developed. Rapid methods require sophisticated instruments and expensive chemicals. Therefore it is unaffordable for under-developed countries like Sri Lanka to carry out rapid methods. In this study we tested the effects of refrigeration for selective enrichment media and checked whether it is possible to carry out culture method without a break to reduce the cumbersome nature of the standard detection process.

Poultry products, milk products and fish have been identified as a major source of Salmonella infection to humans. Therefore chicken, milk powder, ice cream and fish were taken as food sources to check this effect. Two tests were carried out for each product and lower number of colonies of Salmonella and higher number of colonies of Salmonella were inoculated for each sample. Standard method and modified method were carried out for each and results were obtained from comparing these two methods. Finally the results were analyzed using statistical method, Matched Pair Sign Test.

Overall results indicated that there is no significant difference between the culture method and the modified method.


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