ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Elizabeth Mnyandu , Oluwatosin A. Ijabadeniyi and Suren Singh
1Department of Biotechnology and Food Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South Africa.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2014;8(3):1973-1980
© The Author(s). 2014
Received: 27/12/2013 | Accepted: 08/03/2014 | Published: 31/06/2014
Abstract

A study was done to assess the effectiveness of 200 ppm sodium hypochlorite (chlorine), 1% sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) and 0.5% levulinic acid in reducing L. monocytogenes ATCC7644 biofilms. 0.05% SDS and 0.5% levulinic acid were also used combined (mixture). After treatment with sanitizers, the biofilms were stored at 4°C for up to 72 hours and samples were tested at 0, 24, 48 and 72 hours. The contact times were varied to 1, 3, 5 minutes. Results revealed that biofilms were still viable after treatment with these sanitizers. There was no significance difference between storage times. Varying contact times from 1 to 3 minutes did not show a significance difference however there was a significance difference when the contact time was increased to 5 minutes. Non- adapted biofilms had highest log reductions compared to chlorine adapted and heat adapted biofilms. Treatment with chlorine was least effective in reducing viability of biofilms, followed by levulinic acid then a mixture of levulinic acid and SDS. SDS used alone had highest log reductions. Application of sanitizers at different contact times combined or individually may be successful in reducing biofilms in food manufacturing units. A careful selection of sanitizer for each specific pathogen may be required if sanitizers are to work effectively against biofilms.

Keywords

Food safety, Fresh produce, Listeria monocytogenes, Biofilms, Adapted biofilms, Sanitizers, Food borne illnesses

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© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.