Enumeration results were used to evaluate the effect of
malic acid, lactic acid, and GSE on E. coli and optimize the
concentration for minimizing the log number using JMP
prediction profiler (Fig. 3). The profiler showed that GSE
was not a contributing factor when combined with malic
and lactic acid. GSE has shown to be inferior to organic
acids by Ganesh et al. (2012). Organic matter found on
cantaloupe cubes can possibly react with the GSE and
reduce antimicrobial activity (Russell 1999). The figure also
illustrated that increasing concentration of organic acids
enhanced pathogen reduction. However, as the storage day
increased, the antimicrobial activity did not increase.