FIGURE 1.
Endophytic recovery of S. enterica serovars and the distance traveled into the vascular stem tissue from soil inoculated with a five-strain cocktail (S. Javiana, Newport, Poona, Montevideo, and Typhimurium) at ca 8.3 log10 CFU/root zone. All stems derived from inoculated soil in the experimental group were harvested aseptically at ca. 1 cm above the soil line, sterilized, cut into ca. 0.5 cm segments and screened for endophytic populations of Salmonella. Molecular serotyping was used to determine the serovar of isolated colonies for each Salmonella-positive stem segment. Serovar Typhimurium was not identified from any of the stem segments and therefore, is not included in this figure. Stem position 1 represents ca. 1.0–1.5 cm from soil line while position 9 is closest to the apical portion of the stem (ca. 5.0–5.5 cm from soil line).