resented in Table 1. The values of AM and PM ranged from 3.3 to
8.9 log CFU/g and 4.9 to 8.4 log CFU/g, respectively. Only 3.0% of the
samples had AM counts inferior to 105 CFU/g and 59.7% of samples
had counts between 107 and 108 CFU/g. Regarding PM 62.9% of
samples had counts between 107 and 108 CFU/g. These values are
higher than those described in Abadias et al. (2008) in fresh-cut
fruit samples that varied between 2.0 and 7.1 log CFU/g for AM
and ranged from 1.7 to 7.1 log CFU/g for PM. Viswanathan and Kaur
(2001) also found high counts of AM in fresh-cut pineapple and
watermelon with values ranging from 6.9 to 8.2 log CFU/g and 6.9 to
8.0 log CFU/g respectively. On the other hand, Seow et al. (2012)
obtained values of AM counts in whole apples of 2.1e5.1 log CFU/
g and inferior to 5.1 log CFU/g in the case of PM numbers. However,
the microbial counts in whole fruit are lower than in fresh-cut fruit
due to the fact that the processing operations are potential sources
of contamination (Abadias et al., 2008).