Effect of Different Household Decontamination Procedures on Antioxidant Activity and Microbial Load of Vegetables

Aims: Decontamination procedures are different in each country, as the otherapplications of disinfection, and standards. The aim of this study was toevaluate the effects of household decontaminations and storage time on theantioxidant activity and microbial load of salad vegetables.Instrument & Methods: This analytic-descriptive study was conducted on 4types of salad vegetables; cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and sweet basil. Afterwashing, samples with storage time of 0 day were analyzed immediately. Othersamples were held in 4°C for 3 and 5 days. Five different washing anddecontamination methods were compared; water washing, detergent washing,benzalkonium chloride, sequential washing and Kanz disinfecting method. TheFerric Reducing Ability of Plasma assay was used to measure the antioxidantactivity. Aerobic mesophyll bacteria and total coliforms were chosen asmicrobial load index. ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc tests were used to analyze thedata.Findings: By increasing the storage time, the antioxidant activity of all types ofvegetables reduced. There was a significant decrease in antioxidant activity inall types of vegetables using sequential washing method with water, detergent,and benzalkonium chloride and Kanz disinfection method. All washing methodswere effective in decontamination for either mesophyll bacteria or totalcoliforms, except for total coliforms in lettuce. There was no significantdifference in microbial load among first 4 methods of washing (p> 0.05), but asignificant difference was observed in Kanz disinfection method (p<0.05).Conclusion: Kanz disinfection is the most effective decontamination method toeliminate microorganisms index, which also reduce the antioxidant activity.

Effect of Different Household Decontamination Procedures on Antioxidant Activity and Microbial Load of Vegetables Keywords:

Vegetables [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68014675] , Antioxidants [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68000975] , Decontamination [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68003666] , Colony Count , Microbial [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68015169] , Detergents [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68003902]