Salmonella enterica Interactions with Fresh Produce

The emergence of food-borne illness outbreaks linked to the contamination of fruits and vegetables is a great concern in industrialized countries. The current lack of control measures and effective sanitization methods prompt the need for new strategies to reduce contamination of produce. Our ability to assess the risk associated with produce contamination and to devise innovative control strategies depends on the identification of critical determinants that affect the growth and the persistence of human pathogens on plants. Salmonella enterica, a common causal agent of illness linked to produce, has the ability to colonize and persist on plants. Thus, our main objective was to identify plant-inducible genes that have a role in the growth and/or persistence of S. enterica on postharvest lettuce. Our findings suggest that in-vitro biofilm formation tests may provide a suitable model to predict the initial attachment of Salmonella to cut-romaine lettuce leaves and confirm that Salmonella could persist on lettuce during shelf-life storage. Importantly, we found that Salmonella association with lettuce increases its acid-tolerance, a trait which might be correlated with an enhanced ability of the pathogen to pass through the acidic barrier of the stomach. We have demonstrated that Salmonella can internalize leaves of iceberg lettuce through open stomata. We found for the first time that internalization is an active bacterial process mediated by chemotaxis and motility toward nutrient produced in the leaf by photosynthesis. These findings may provide a partial explanation for the failure of sanitizers to efficiently eradicate foodborne pathogens in leafy greens and may point to a novel mechanism utilized by foodborne and perhaps plant pathogens to colonize leaves. Using resolvase in vivo expression technology (RIVET) we have managed to identify multiple Salmonella genes, some of which with no assigned function, which are involved in attachment to and persistence of Salmonella on lettuce leaves. The precise function of these genes in Salmonella-leaf interactions is yet to be elucidated. Taken together, our findings have advanced the understanding of how Salmonella persist in the plant environment, as well as the potential consequences upon ingestion by human. The emerging knowledge opens new research directions which should ultimately be useful in developing new strategies and approaches to reduce leaf contamination and enhance the safety of fresh produce.