Study on Contamination, Source and Microbial Quality of Selected Street Fruit Juices and Sherbet in Tangail City

Fruit juice and sherbet are popular refreshing drinks with great taste and health benefits. These are available in most of the public places at reasonable prices which are consumed by road side customers of all ages. Lack of good manufacturing practices, nutritionally rich component of juices makes the product good medium for microbial growth. Water used for juice preparation can be a major source of microbial contamination. Argued this point, total 21 numbers of samples of different fruit juice and sherbet were collected from street vendors of Tangail city for the assessment of microbiological quality. Result revealed that the Total Viable Count (TVC) of fruit juice samples ranged from 4.5×104 cfu/ml to 3.6×107 cfu/ml where the permitted value of Gulf standard (2000) and BSTI standard (2014) for TVC are 5.0×104 cfu/ml and 100 cfu/ml, respectively. Total coliform count (TCC) of fruit juices ranged from 1×103 cfu/ml to 2×107 cfu/ml where the accepted value of Gulf standard and BSTI standard for TCC is 100 cfu/ml and <10 cfu/ml, respectively. Total fungal count (TFC) of fruit juices ranged from 6.3×104cfu/ml to 7.2×106 cfu/ml where the permitted value of Gulf standard and BSTI standard for TFC 1×103 cfu/ml and<10 cf u/ml, respectively. Again, TVC of ingredient water and wash water ranged from 2×103 cfu/ml and 1.3×107 cfu/ml to 5.6×104 cfu/ml and 1.7×107 cfu/ml, respectively where the accepted value of BSTI standard is 1000 cfu/ml for water. TCC of ingredient water and wash water ranged from 150 cfu/ml and 3.8×105 to 340 cfu/ml and 5.6×106 cfu/ml, respectively. BSTI standard recommends zero value of TCC for water. Further, TFC of ingredient water and wash water ranged from 1.5×104 cfu/ml and 9×104 cfu/ml to 5.6×103 cfu/ml and 1.4×107 cfu/ml where the permitted value of BSTI standard is 0 cfu/ml. the high content of microbial load in ingredient and wash water may be the main reason to contaminate fruit juice and sherbet. According to the Gulf and BSTI standard, the microbiological parameters of all the collected juices and water of Tangail city were out of the permitted range. So government should take an immediate step to create awareness among the street vendors as well as consumers about the sanitation and hygiene to make these foods safe for human consumption. Keywords: Fruit juice, sherbet, street vendors, sanitation, hygiene Cite this Article Md. Jahangir Alam, Aslam Uddin, Uzzal Chakraborty, et al. Study on contamination, Source and Microbial Quality of Selected Street Fruit Juices and Sherbet in Tangail City. Research & Reviews: Journal of Food Science and Technology. 2018; 7(1): 1–8p.