Evaluation of a selective medium for hydrogen sulfide production by salmonella

An evaluation was made of Padron-Dock-Stader sulfide (PDS) agar for the rapid detection of Salmonella and Arizona microorganisms in foods. Analysts from 9 Food and Drug Administration District laboratories determined the reaction of 638 Salmonella cultures, 30 Arizona cultures, and 1754 non-Salmonella and non-Arizona cultures isolated from 157 food samples in PDS agar. The degree of positive reactions of these cultures in this agar was scored on a scale of "-" to "+++". The highest percentage of Salmonella isolates (64.1%) was in the category of +++ reactions. Progressively lower percentages of Salmonella isolates occurred in the more negative reaction categories. The highest percentage of Arizona isolates (66.7%) occurred in the intermediate ++ category. The majority of non-Salmonella and non-Arizona isolates occurred in the minus (41.0%) and plus or minus (44.8%) categories. Advantages of using the PDS agar are that it is simple to use, requires no specialized training or equipment, and alerts analysts to those Salmonella cultures which produce atypical reactions in triple sugar iron agar particularly the lactosepositive Salmonella. However, in this study the occurrence of false-negative reactions ranged from 4.3 to 13.9% for Salmonella and from 0 to 6.7% for Arizona, according to the criteria used to interpret the reactions in PDS agar.