Abstract:The extraction of ATP was optimized using cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) and β-cyclodextrin in order to save ATP bioluminescence detection cost, and its accuracy to estimate the total bacteria counts (TBC) in food was investigated by ATP bioluminescence. Results showed the counts of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, lactic acid bacteria, Bacillus subtilis were positively associated with the bioluminescence intensity of ATP extracted by CTAB, and the correlation coefficient was more than 0.92. Moreover, the TBC of some products (such as fruit juices, wheat, milk and meat) detected by plate count method were within 103~107 CFU/mL, CTAB extracted ATP bioluminescence was consistently according to bioluminescence intensity. And the correlation coefficient of the two methods reached to 0.9895, but a poor relativity was observed in fresh meat. Therefore, the elimination of somatic cell ATP in fresh meat was essential to estimate the TBC when using CTAB method.