[Development of a technique for recovering Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts from fresh vegetables]

Techniques described for recovering Giardia and Cryptosporidium (oo)cysts from fruit and vegetables are generally inadequate and present variable recovery efficience and elevated costs. The aim of our study was to evaluate the recovery efficiency of a simple and economic technique to apply either to berry vegetables, like tomatoes and peppers, or to large leave vegetables, like lettuce and chicory. The method include contamination and further elution of the vegetables. Then sedimentation of (oo)cysts by centrifugation of the eluate of vegetables and their visualization by means of direct immunofluorescence. The higher recovery values for both protozoa were obtained in large leave vegetables with mean data above 70% for Giardia and 76% for Cryptosporidium, whereas the values observed in the berry vegetables were above 43% for Giardia and above 37% for Cryptosporidium on average.