Results for lactic acid bacteria, mesophiles and psychotropics are
presented in Table 1. For all microorganisms there were decreased initial
counts for irradiated samples compared with control. This was expected
because gamma radiation is widely known to reduce initial
microbial counts. The differences between the control and 3.0 kGy samples
was 3.74 log cycles for lactic acid bacteria, 4.0 log cycles for
mesophilic anaerobes and 3.58 log cycles for psychotropic anaerobes.
Regarding mesophilic anaerobes, a difference (p b 0.0001) for treatment
effect in contrast 1 (control versus irradiated samples) was observed.
There was a significant difference (p= 0.039) for contrast 2 as
the 1.5 kGy and 3.0 kGy samples presented differences in microbial
growth during the 28 days of storage. However, these differences
weren't noticed in contrast 3, between the irradiated samples.