Abstract
Irrigation scheme is among the major transmission modes of enteric human pathogens. Irrigation of vegetables with polluted water and untreated wastewater is a common practice worldwide. This practice is common in urban areas of low-income countries including Ethiopia, where there is increasing demands for fresh vegetables with poor wastewater treatment. The aim of the present study was to assess the microbial quality and prevalence of antimicrobial resistance of bacteria isolated from vegetables irrigated with Hasassa River, Southeastern Ethiopia. Irrigation water and vegetable samples (carrot, lettuce, and garlic) were collected from irrigation sites and analyzed for their bacteriological load and presence of any pathogenic microbes. The resistance patterns were detected following standard procedures. Appropriate serial dilutions of the suspension from 10-4, 10-5 and 10-6 were spread-plated on a suitable solid media for counts of aerobic Mesophilic bacteria, Gram-negative Enterobacteriaceae and Staphylococci, and homogenized samples were heated at 80°C for 10 min in a water bath to count aerobic spore formers, respectively. The maximum overall mean counts of aerobic Mesophilic bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae, aerobic spore formers, Staphylococci, and total coliform counts were 8.21, 6.58, 6,88, 6.88 log CFU ml-1 and >1100 MPN 100 ml-1, respectively. The microi¬‚ora of vegetable samples were dominated by Bacillus species (21.9%) followed by Corynebacterium species (12.5%), Lactobacillus species (12.5%). Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella species were detected in 21.9 and 15.6% of the samples, respectively. The result of antimicrobial test showed that all the isolates 32 (100%) were resistant to Penicillin, 26 (81.3%) to Vancomycin, 23 (71.9%) to Ampicillin, 15 (46.9%) to Chloramphenicol, 15 (46.9%) to Erythromycin, and the least 3 (9.4%) to Perfloxacin. The present finding revealed that vegetables irrigated with Hasassa River appears to pose microbial contamination which may be transferred directly or indirectly during pre-harvest and post-harvest handling to fresh vegetables which potentially constitutes a health risk to consumers. Key words: Antibiotic resistance, Hasassa River, irrigation water, vegetables.
Highlights
Despite the fact that fresh and minimally processed vegetables and fruits provide the most important human diet, consumption of fresh vegetables and fruits has been associated health risk for consumers
Aerobic mesophilic bacterial flora identified from the water samples and different vegetables collected from the downstream of Hasassa River were dominated by Bacillus spp. (21.88%) followed by Corynebacterium species (12.5%) and Lactobacillus species (12.5%) and the least isolation was for Neisseria species (3.13%) (Table 2)
The present study revealed the potential hazard of raw vegetables collected from Gedeb Asassa areas, which were irrigated by Hasassa River
Summary
Despite the fact that fresh and minimally processed vegetables and fruits provide the most important human diet, consumption of fresh vegetables and fruits has been associated health risk for consumers. Surveillance of vegetables has indicated that these foods can be contaminated with various bacterial pathogens, including Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC), Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella species, Shigella species, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter species (Adane and Tsehayneh, 2017)
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