Fig 9. Effect of washing time and disinfection treatments and processing protocols on the recovery of bacteria from P. furfuracea.

Details concerning washing time (a) and the type and/or time of disinfection tested (b) on KB and ABGM media after 7 days of incubation at 25°C under dark conditions are shown in the figure. The processing protocols (b) compared were comminution (Commin.) versus crushing (Crush.). Each symbol (a) or bar (b) represents the mean value of duplicate counts on natamycin-supplemented media, from the same bulk thalli sample (five thalli from different trees). Standard deviations are represented by vertical lines. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences (* p<0.05) between comminution versus crushing on the two culture media used. Significant differences were also observed between disinfection versus non-disinfection treatments (p<0.05).