Journal of Environment and Health Science | 2015-06-01

Assessing Bacteriological Quality of Vegetables sold at Nekemte Town, Ethiopia

Desalegn Amenu

Abstract

Vegetables are naturally delicious food products that are widely consumed throughout the world. But, fresh vegetables may be exposed to potential pathogenic bacteria during preparation, harvesting, storage, and improper handling to become contaminated this product. Therefore the study was done to identify and determine the bacteriological quality of some selected vegetables sold at Nekemte town. The study was conducted in Nekemte town between March 2015 to may 2015. Totally five vegetables were collected specifically and analyzed for bacteriological examination at wollega university, biology laboratory. As the result indicated these selected vegetables had high total bacterial count, this indicated that vegetables were contaminated by bacteria. Except potato, all vegetables had high bacterial load; this shows that there was high contamination level. Most of the time fruits and vegetables are easily contaminated if lacks proper handling. Therefore, to overcome this problem it needs further consideration. i.e. create awareness to the community about and how vegetables caused disease

Keywords: Total bacterial count, pathogens, vegetables, contamination