Studies of acid resistance characteristics in multiple drug resistant Salmonella species isolated from tomatoes.

Salmonella species found to have a great potential of causing a variety of diseases ranging from gastroenteritis to enteric fever. Salmonella have been isolated from all food, animals and also found in the vegetables such as tomatoes, spinach etc. Several out breaks of Salmonellosis have been associated with the consumption of raw tomatoes. This is because of the fact that Salmonella attaches to the surface of tomatoes and also present in the interior part due to geotropic transmission via contaminated soil irrigated with contaminated water. .During the life cycle, Salmonella encounters the various environments such as acidic environment (low pH). To overcome such factors, Salmonella has certain adaptable mechanisms. In present 'study total 200 samples of tomatoes were analyzed out of which 10 samples were found to contain Salmonella. All the 10 isolates were then subjected to the antibiotic susceptibility testing and were found to be resistant against several antibiotics. These were subjected to acid resistant tolerance study.