Prevalence of Microbial Load in Shrimp, Penaeus monodon and Prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii from Bangladesh

A comparative studies regarding prevalence of microbial flora in the muscle of locally available tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) and giant water prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) have been analyzed in terms of aerobic plate count (APC), enterobacteriaceae and Salmonella-Shigella (SS) counts. The total counts ranged from 2.04x10 to 4.5x10 CFU/ml for shrimp and 1.08x10 to 1.2x10 CFU/ml for prawn. The total coliforms count 2 5 2 5 ranged between 5.4x10 and 8.5x10 cells for the shrimp and for the prawn 5x10 and 4.4x10 cells. Furthermore, 2 5 2 4 the Salmonella-Shigella (SS) count ranged from 0.2x10 to 1.1x10 cells for the shrimp and between 0.26x10 and 2 2 2 0.96x10 cells for the prawn. Sixteen isolates were characterized from all the samples on plate count agar with 4 percentage of different microbes characterized as follows: Staphylococcus auerus (6.25%), Salmonella sp. (25%), Shigella sp. (12.5%), Flavobacterium sp. (12.5%) and Vibrio sp. (43.75%). Results revealed that the microbial load found to be higher in samples taken from the departmental chain shops, without having proper treatment.