Isolation, Identification and Characteristic Studies on Antibiotic sensitivity and Temperature Tolerance of Bacterial Isolates from Fresh and Frozen fish and shrimp samples collected from Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala

Abstract

This study evaluates the bacteriological quality of both fresh and frozen samples of shrimp and mackerel sourced from the local market of Thiruvananthapuram city. The microbial load was found higher in frozen shrimp sample (1.9 x 105 cfu/g) than those of fresh shrimp sample (1.72 x 104 cfu/g). In the case of mackerel also, pathogenic load was observed high in frozen fish sample (1.44 x 104 cfu/g) than the fresh fish sample (5.6 x 104 cfu/g). The antibiotic resistance of bacterial isolates to commonly used antibiotics was also studied. None of the antibiotics tested had 100% activity against all strains of bacteria. All the pathogenic isolates showed higher rate of resistance against penicillin. The isolate microflora from the samples include bacteria in the genera Staphylococcus, Proteus, Micrococcus, Enterobacter and Pseudomonas and have been proven to be of great public health significance. Temperature tolerance (Thermal death point) of pathogenic isolates revealed that Pseudomonas spp and Staphylococcus spp. have high survival rate.