Pure isolates of Clostridium spp. are required when further investigations are needed, such as the characterisation of the colonies, sporulation and germination, biochemical analysis, growth rate and growth conditions, toxin production, spoilage potential and genomic profile. However, the isolation of cold-tolerant Clostridium spp. from suspicious meat samples is challenging due to their slow growth rates and overgrowth with less fastidious meat microbiota. Therefore, this study aimed to establish a practical method for the isolation of psychrophilic and psychrotolerant Clostridium spp. Primarily, meat drip samples (n = 3), enriched in Peptone Yeast Glucose Starch (PYGS) broth, were heated with different temperatures and durations, before they were subcultured on Columbia blood agar (CBA). The treatment procedure of heating samples at 80 °C for 5 min was evaluated as effective and was further validated using pure cultures of lactic acid bacteria (n = 5), bacteria belonging to the family of Enterobacteriaceae (n = 5), and cold-tolerant Clostridium spp. (n = 34). Almost all other meat microbiota was inactivated by heating at 80 °C for 5 min, while 28 strains of cold-tolerant Clostridium spp. survived. Finally, the treatment procedure was applied with drip of meat samples (n = 41) previously tested positive for 49 cold-tolerant Clostridium spp. using specific multiplex qPCR. All meat drip samples were enriched in PYGS broth by incubating them at 4 °C for 3 weeks, to ensure growth of Clostridium spp. before the enrichments were proceeded to heat treatment and to culturing on CBA. A total of 35 (71 %) from 49 Clostridium spp. strains were isolated using this culturing procedure. The accuracy of the recovery rates obtained from two replicates was 68 %. The method of detection and isolation applied in this study is easy and resulted in a high isolation rate of cold-tolerant Clostridium spp.
Keywords: Meat drip; Meat microbiota; Meat spoilage; PYGS; Spore; qPCR.
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