Evaluation of long- and short-term storage conditions and efficiency of a novel microencapsulated Salmonella phage cocktail for controlling Salmonella in chicken meat.

This study aims to assess the stability and activity of using a lyophilization, formulation design and to evaluate their efficiency for controlling Salmonella in chicken meat. The phage-loaded 0.3 M sucrose gelatin mixture at 4 and 25 °C displayed significantly less phage titer loss ( p  < 0.05) than the other excipients and liquid phage cocktail in 12 months. The results showed that there were significant reductions of Salmonella at the end of the storage in chicken meat for newly prepared phage powder (1.86 log CFU/cm 2 and 2.18 log CFU/cm 2 ), lyophilized phage powders stored at 4 °C (1.08 log CFU/cm 2 and 1.26 log CFU/cm 2 ) and stored at 25 °C (0.66 log CFU/cm 2 and 1.00 log CFU/cm 2 ) for 10 months at MOI 100 and 1000, respectively. The results demonstrated that lyophilized phages in a simple food grade formulation can be successfully stored and might be used in biocontrol of Salmonella in meat.