Assessment of microbiological contamination in saengshik products from the Korean market and identification of the irradiation status

Gui-Ran Kim; Hafiz Muhammad Shahbaz; Hyun-Kyu Kyung; Joong-Ho Kwon

doi:10.1007/s10068-017-0273-1

Assessment of microbiological contamination in saengshik products from the Korean market and identification of the irradiation status

Food Sci Biotechnol. 2017 Dec 12;27(2):607-615. doi: 10.1007/s10068-017-0273-1. eCollection 2018 Apr.

Authors

Gui-Ran Kim¹, Hafiz Muhammad Shahbaz², Hyun-Kyu Kyung¹, Joong-Ho Kwon^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ 1School of Food Science and Biotechnology, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.
² 3Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore 54000, Pakistan.
³ 2Food and Bio-industry Research Institute, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.

Abstract

This study investigated the prevalence of microbiological contamination in commercial Saengshik products (samples SP-1 to SP-12) from the Korean market, and identified their irradiation status. SP-2, SP-8, and SP-12 showed less than 3.66 and 1.10 log colony forming units (CFU)/g in total plate and coliforms counts, respectively, while the remaining samples showed more than 4.70 and 2.35 log CFU/g, respectively. Four samples were positive on some of foodborne pathogenic bacteria (Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli O157:H7, and Bacillus cereus). SP-2, SP-8, and SP-12 contained no pathogenic bacteria and were suspected to have been irradiated. They were confirmed as positive using photostimulated luminescence (PSL) analysis. PSL positive results on samples SP-2, SP-8 and SP-12 were finally confirmed by the authentic thermoluminescence (TL) analysis on the basis of TL glow curve shape, intensity, temperature range of TL peak maxima and TL ratio (TL₁/TL₂).

Keywords: Food irradiation; Microbial safety; Photostimulated luminescence; Saengshik; Thermoluminescence.