Identification of microorganisms that may contribute to the safety and quality of traditional foods and beverages consumed in the Black Sea region

The main aim of the EU-funded BaSeFood project is to invesitgate the healthy properties of traditional foods and beverages of plant origin. Quality and safety of foods are largely dependent of the level of microbial contamination. For this study the majority of plants, as ingredients, of prioritized foods and drinks was obtained and collected from Georgia, Bulgaria, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. The microbial species (strains) potentially belong to three different categories: (A) beneficial; (B1) detrimental of environment, and (B2) dangerous to human origin (classical “foodborne” pathogens) among all the variety of microbial contaminants that were determined. All isolated microorganisms have been identified with semi-automatic biochemical and serological tests and MULDY techniques. Beneficial species isolated from fresh green parts of plants included mainly Streptococcus lactis (carrot); enterococci, Enterococcus faecalis/faecium (hot pepper) in Bulgarian samples; Actinomyces israeli (kale, Turkey); Bifidobacterium longum (parsley), and Lactobacillus acidophilus (elderly flowers) in Ukrainian samples. The dominating opportunistic pathogenic bacteria (the category B1) belong mainly to species of Klebsiella pneumoniae and oxytoca (rose petals), Enterobacter cloacae (carrot), Proteus vulgaris/mirabilis (sorrel, dill, parsley, Ukraine and Bulgaria), and Str. agalactiae (nettle, corn, Georgia, and Turkey). Isolation of some bacteria (for example Serratia odorifera biogroup 1 and Pantoea agglomerans ) are plant specific. Salmonella typhi were obtained from sorrel (Ukraine), Shigella flexneri ABC from kale, crop and green beans (Turkey), and Listeria monocytogenes from bread (Georgia). The amount of bacteria with potential beneficial properties is significantly increased when selected traditional fermented foods and drinks are assessed: L. fermentum, B. breve and L. acidophylus (in boza), B. dentinum (in fermented beans, Turkey), A. israeli, L. plantarum and casei (kvass, Russia). We have concluded that the amount of beneficial bacteria was significantly less compared with the main dominating group of potentially pathogenic bacteria and foodborne pathogens were rarely found.

This work is funded under the EU FP7 Theme 2: “Food, Agriculture, Fisheries, and Biotechnology”, Grant Agreement no.227118