[Comparative study of 4 methods for isolating Salmonella from surface waters]

The study presented here is the first stage of a project designed to determine the presence of Salmonella serotypes in Lujan river waters, which flow beside the urban area of the homonymous city, in the province of Buenos Aires. It consisted in a comparative study of four methods for Salmonellae detection in 200 samples: Tetrathionate-brilliant green; mannitol-selenite; Rappaport 25 and modified Rappaport-Vassiliadis broth, each of them with and without pre-enrichment in buffered peptone water. The submerged gauze technique was applied to the sampling in three different spots of the river: at the town center, two km water above, and two down-stream from the city. Best results were obtained when modified Rappaport-Vassiliadis enrichment broth and brilliant green agar with 0.25% of sodium deoxycholate were used, after pre-enrichment of the samples in buffered peptone water. Salmonella were isolated from 46% of the samples studied, and 16 serotypes were identified: S. Typhimurium, S. Enteritidis, S. Infantis, S. Mbandaka, S. Israel and S. Subspecies IV 18 z36: z38:-, among them.