Assessment of Microbial Floral Strength During Post Harvest Handling of Mango and Lemon Fruits Joshi A.M.1,*, Dabhi M.N.1,**, Pandya P.A.2, Sojaliya H.R.1 1Deptt. of Processing & Food Engineering, CAET, JAU, Junagadh 2Polytechnic in Agro Processing, CAET, JAU, Junagadh *email: amjoshi@jau.in
** mndabhi@jau.in
Online published on 23 December, 2016. Abstract A study was conducted to assess the microbial load on lemon and mango fruits at different post harvest handling stages. After harvesting, there are six different post harvest handling stages were identified and they are collection, grading, packaging, transportation, wholesaler and retailer stages of different fruits. And it was found that the microbial load was suddenly increases at Transportation stage and after it the microbial load continuously increases at subsequent stages i.e. at wholesaler and retailer level. Not only plant pathogenic microorganisms but also the human pathogenic microbes such as E.coli, Salmonella etc. were also found on the surface of fruits which were not found before the transportation stage. Some soil microbes such as Mucor, Rhyzopus, Aspergillus spp. were also found on the surface of fruits. Before the transportation stage, microbes which were already present on the surface of fruits, able to grow at normal growth rate but at and after the transportation stage microbes grow at doubling or tripling growth rate. Not only this, newer kind of microbes were also identified. And it might be due to mis-handling of fruits as well as during transportation, some agricultural and nonagricultural products are transported along with the fruits. Top Keywords Raw fruits, Post harvest handling stages, Surface microbial flora. Top |