Abstract:Sausages with or without additional spice extracts were vacuum packed and stored at room temperature (20 ℃) or 4 ℃, to study the effect of storage temperature and addition of spice extracts on changes in microflora of vacuum-packaged sausages. Both, traditional culture and polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) methods were used in this study. The results from traditional plate culture method revealed that the total bacterial count as well as that of Lactobacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Staphylococcus sp., and Brochothrix thermosphacta showed a dramatic increase (P < 0.05), and the number of microorganisms in the sample stored at 20 ℃ was greater than that stored at 4 ℃ (P < 0.05). The addition of spice extracts significantly reduced the number of microorganisms in the sausage samples under the same storage condition (P < 0.05). PCR-DGGE results showed that Lactobacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Brochothrix thermosphacta, and Staphylococcus sp. were the dominant spoilage bacteria during storage, similar to the results from the traditional plate culture method.
