Isolation of Salmonellae from Sewage with a New Procedure of Enrichment

Abstract

Forty samples of sewage on Moore's swabs were examined for the presence of salmonellae. They were first pre‐enriched in buffered peptone water. From each pre‐enrichment, three enrichments were made: (1) in a new, considerably modified, formula of Rappaport medium (R 10) incubated at 43 °C (R 10/43 °C), (2) in the usual formula (R25) of the same medium at 37 °C (R25/37 °C) and (3) in Muller‐Kauffmann's tetrathionate broth at 43 °C (MK/43 °C). Practically the same numbers of swabs were found positive by the first two enrichment procedures, 38 and 39 respectively, while only 17 were found positive by the MK procedure. The R10/43 °C method was superior to the two other procedures; it yielded 103 strains of salmonellae as against 82 with the second Rappaport procedure, and only 25 with the MK/43 °C technique. A similar observation was made concerning the frequency of isolation of different serotypes by the three procedures; the number of the isolated serotypes was 24, 19 and 11, respectively. The new R 10/43 °C method of enrichment had also a much stronger inhibitory effect on the competing bacteria than the two other procedures of enrichment used.