Published Paper Details:

Some locally fermented foods have been associated with several microorganisms including Lactic Acid Bacteria(LAB) which have several potential health or nutritional benefits. Therefore, the aim of the study was to screen the locally fermented food condiments for predominant organisms for safe utilization. The fermented food condiments; fermented seeds of fluted pumpkin(ogiri) and African Oil bean seed(ukpaka) were utilized in this study. Isolation of various microorganisms were carried out using differential media such as mannitol salt agar, Macconkey agar, Salmonella shigella agar and De Man, Rogosa and Sharpe agar respectively. The developed colonies were subjected to phenotypic characterization such as macroscopic examination, Gram staining, biochemical tests and genotypic characterization. The phenotypic and genotypic characterization revealed the predominant isolates as Bacillus subtilis and Lactobacillus sp. Other isolates were Salmonella sp., Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The isolate, Bacillus subtilis has 92.01% pairwise similarity with Bacillus subtilis strain C3a-FIIRO with NCBI accession number MW577298. The obtained results proved the presence of beneficial LAB in the assayed fermented food condiments, hence safe for consumption.