Prevalence of Pathogenic Bacteria Isolated from Two Selected Salad Vegetables and Antibiogram Profile of <i>Klebsiella</i> spp.

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine microbiological quality of raw salad vegetables of Jessore city of Bangladesh. Fourteen samples of two types of vegetables which are commonly used for salad eg. Tomato (<i>Lycopersicum esculentum</i>) and Cucumber (<i>Cucumis sativus</i>) were collected from different local markets of Jessore City and their bacteriological attributes were investigated using routine methods. All the vegetables were highly contaminated with coliforms and fecal coliforms. Range of Total Viable Count were 11x10⁶ CFU/g to 20x10⁷ CFU/g for tomato and 12x10⁵ CFU/g to 24x10⁷ CFU/g for cucumber, Total Coliform Count were 11x10⁴ CFU/g to 2 x10⁶ CFU/g for tomato and 10.2x10³ CFU/g to 60x10⁴ CFU/g for cucumber and Total Staphyllococcal Count were 11x10⁴ CFU/g to 25x10⁶ CFU/g for tomato and 10x10⁴ CFU/g to 50x10⁶ CFU/g for cucumber. Total coliforms were identified as <i>Escherichia coli<i>, <i>Klebsiella<i> spp., <i>Enterobacter<i> spp., <i>Citrobacter<i> spp. and <i>Shigella<i> spp. Antibiogram was conducted with twelve different antibiotics for some randomly selected pure colonies of <i>Klebsiella<i> spp. Multidrug resistance was observed in 90% isolates with resistance from two to six antibiotics. Hygienic practices should be followed in handling the vegetables in local markets and vegetables might have an important role as a source of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

The Agriculturists 2015; 13(1) 9-17