Occurrence of Total Viable Counts, Total Coliforms, <i>Salmonella</i> Spp. And Fecal Coliforms from Fresh, Sundried and Parboiled Lake Malawi Sardine <i>Engraulicypris Sardella</i> Along the Value Chain in Nkhota-Kota District, Malawi

Changes in microbiological quality of fresh, sun-dried and parboiled Engraulicypris sardella (Usipa) along the value chain of Nkhota kota District were evaluated. The main objective was to analyze the occurrence of Total Viable Counts, Total coliforms and pathogenic flora Salmonella spp and Fecal coliforms, from a view of public health safety. For that, 90 samples (Fresh, sundried and parboiled) were aseptically, analyzed for microbiological load using six-fold serial dilution. Total Viable Count and Total coliforms were enumerated by pour plate methods. Salmonella spp. was isolated by Salmonella-shigella Agar (SSA) and Xylose Lysine Deoxycholate Agar (XLD) while for isolation of fecal coliform, the inverted durham tubes method was performed. One and Two-way analysis of variance was used to analyze data in SPSS for windows version 20.0 at p < 0.05. For fresh fish, no statistical difference was observed between beaches both for Total Viable counts and Total coliforms. No statistical difference was also recorded for Total viable counts for nodes and processing methods. However, the isolated effects of nodes and processing methods indicated that sundried fish load high number of Total coliforms (9.404 x 104 CFU g-1) than parboiled fish (0.293x104 CFU g-1). Traders node was much more contaminated by Total coliforms (7.651x104 CFU g-1) than Processors node (2.047 x104 CFU g-1). The percentage of positive cases for Salmonella spp, and Fecal coliforms was much low in parboiled fish than sundried and fresh fish.