Biotyping of Bacillus cereus from the street vended foods in Srinagar area of Kashmir, India

Aim: The present study was undertaken to describe the biotyping of Bacillus cereus isolated from different street vended mutton tikka and chutney samples. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 street vended food samples comprising of 60 mutton tikka and 40 chutney samples were tested. Results: The biotype 3 and biotype 4 showed the highest occurrence with, 29.63% and 25.93% isolates falling in these biotypes, respectively. The percentage occurrence of the biotypes 1, 6, 2, 5, and 7 was 14.81%, 11.11%, 7.40%, 7.40% and 3.84%, respectively. The most common found biotypes in Mutton tikka were biotypes 3(29.63%), 4(25.93%), 1(14.81%) and 6(11.11%). The Bacillus cereus strains isolated from chutney samples could be divided into 7 of the 9 possible biotypes. The biotypes 6 and 7 showed the highest occurrence with 38.46% and 30.76% falling in these biotypes, respectively. The biotype 5 and 2 were prevalent to the extent of 23.07%, 7.69%, respectively. The biotypes 3, 4 and 1 were absent. The mean bacterial count of 60 mutton tikka and 40 chutney samples was 4.6817 and 5.6575 log cfu/g. 10 Conclusion: The field isolates and the standard strains of Bacillus cereus had similar cultural, morphological and biochemical characteristics. The biotypes recovered from the Mutton tikka samples were biotypes 3, 4, 1 and 6 and in chutneys the biotypes recovered were 6, 7, 5 and 2. The strains of Bacillus cereus were highly resistant to penicillin G (92.59%).