FIGURE 4.

Survival of individual single-gene deletion mutants on in-shell pistachios. Pistachios were inoculated with single strains, dried and stored. Populations of Salmonella were enumerated as log₁₀CFU/g, as described in “Materials and Methods”, immediately after inoculation, after drying, and periodically during storage. The difference between the population immediately after inoculation and at 110 days of storage is plotted for each mutant. Data represent averages from two independent trials with duplicate samples processed per trial. Error bars indicate standard deviation (n = 4). ^∗P < 0.05, ^∗∗P < 0.005, based on two tailed Student’s t-test. Supplementary Table 2 contains data for all time points.