Evaluation of antibiotic susceptibility of Lactobacillus plantarum isolated from traditional Portuguese sausage products

Nowadays the use of fermentative microbiota in food products is researched in order to confer protection to the products and furnish health benefits to consumers The aim of this work was to evaluate antibiotics susceptibility of Lactobacillus plantarum isolated from fermented traditional meat products in order to select them to be used as starters or protective bacteria on fermented meat products. The susceptibility of different L. plantarum isolates (n=44) from fermented/dry/smoked meat products of three different Portuguese industries were tested by Agar disc diffusion method for Vancomycin, Quinupristin/Dalfopristin, Rifampicin, Penicillin G, Erythromycine, Tetracycline, Gentamicin, Lincomycin and Chloramphenicol. Most of the studied L plantarum isolates were susceptible for Tetracycline (75%) and Erythromycin (71%) and could be used safely as starter cultures. Those that presented resistance need to be genetically evaluated since the mechanism of resistance is probably related to mobile genetic elements carried by L plantarum