Impact of Silver Nanoparticle Suspensions on Mixtures of Fungal and Bacterial Microorganisms of Food Production

Abstract

Providing of food safety is a fundamental problem of food production. Silver nanoparticles demonstrate antimicrobial action against multiple bacterial species while not affecting fungal species. Nanosilver colloidal solutions stabilized with Gum Arabic and glycine with the size of nanoparticles from 7 to 12 nm were tested. The experiments were conducted upon cultivating some common fungal microorganisms implemented in food production, such as Aspergillus oryzae and Saccharomyces cerevisiae on different media contaminated with bacteria Escherichia coli, Erwinia herbicola, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Bacillus cereus, and Pediococcus claussenii. Samples were treated with silver nanoparticles colloidal solutions of various concentrations. The results show that nanoparticles inhibit the growth of bacteria within the concentration of 0.03-0.05 g/dm3 in solid media and 0.001-0.005 g/dm3 in liquid media. The specified inhibitory concentrations did not affect the growth of fungi.