Microbial growth in food represents a public health problem that requires immediate attention. In Ecuador, 8924 cases of foodborne illness (FBD) were reported in 2020, most of them caused by bacteria. It is estimated that
Escherichia coli causes 2,801,000 acute illnesses per year
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Microbial growth in food represents a public health problem that requires immediate attention. In Ecuador, 8924 cases of foodborne illness (FBD) were reported in 2020, most of them caused by bacteria. It is estimated that
Escherichia coli causes 2,801,000 acute illnesses per year and results in 3890 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, 270 cases of end-stage renal disease and 230 deaths. Under this context, in this work, alginate capsules containing bioactive compounds from
Lactobacillus plantarum GP108 were developed and their antimicrobial effect against
E.coli was measured. The formulation of the capsules was carried out using a completely randomized experimental design with three formulations: maximum, average and minimum. The antimicrobial activity was measured by in vitro tests based on the increase in optical density during 7 days of exposure of
E. coli with the capsules. By analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was found that the percentage inhibition of the capsules depended only on the formulation (
p-value < 0.05), but not on the number of exposure capsules (
p-value > 0.05). Tukey’s test indicated that the average formulation is the best at inhibiting the growth of
E. coli, maintaining an average of 11.66% inhibition for 7 days. These findings show that bioactive compounds produced by
L. plantarum GP108 encapsulated in alginate could be of potential use for food biopreservation.
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