Abstract
Food can harbour harmful pathogenic microorganisms, such as Salmonella spp. that are responsible by serious human illnesses. The use of natural antimicrobial substances can be practical to maintain the fresh image of food, to increase its shelf life, safety and marketability. We therefore evaluated the in vitro ability of three natural antimicrobial substances (garlic, oregano and chitosan) to inhibit S. enterica under different thermal conditions. All substances exhibited strong antibacterial activities at low temperature. Oregano had the strongest antibacterial properties, followed by chitosan and garlic. These results suggest that garlic, oregano and chitosan can be practical to protect food and consumers from the risk of contamination by S. enterica, to extend food shelf-life, to reduce food waste and to use in hurdle technologies at low temperature.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge all members of the Microbiology Laboratory of the U-VPPA-INRB/IPIMAR for their contribution in the practical work, namely, Paula Costa, Dora Susana Castro, Marisa Santos and Filipa Monteiro. A.M. benefited from a post-doctoral grant by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of Portugal (SFRH/BPD/33090/2006). The FCT supported the study through the research project FreshFish—Preservation of seafood products with modified atmosphere packaging and edible coatings using sea bream and sea bass as models (ref. PPCDT/DG/MAR/82008/2006).
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Marques, A., Encarnação, S., Pedro, S. et al. In vitro antimicrobial activity of garlic, oregano and chitosan against Salmonella enterica . World J Microbiol Biotechnol 24, 2357–2360 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-008-9721-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-008-9721-7