One of the main strategies for maintaining the optimal hygiene level in dairy processing facilities is regular cleaning and disinfection, which is incorporated in the cleaning-in-place (CIP) regimes. However, a frail point of the CIP procedures is their variable efficiency in eliminating biofilm bacteria. In the present study, we evaluated the susceptibility of strong biofilm-forming dairy Bacillus isolates to industrial cleaning procedures using two differently designed model systems. According to our results, the dairy-associated Bacillus isolates demonstrate a higher resistance to CIP procedures, compared to the non-dairy strain of B. subtilis. Notably, the tested dairy isolates are highly persistent to different parameters of the CIP operations, including the turbulent flow of liquid (up to 1 log), as well as the cleaning and disinfecting effects of commercial detergents (up to 2.3 log). Moreover, our observations indicate an enhanced resistance of poly-γ-glutamic acid (PGA)-overproducing B. subtilis, which produces high amounts of proteinaceous extracellular matrix, to the CIP procedures (about 0.7 log, compared to the wild-type non-dairy strain of B. subtilis). We therefore suggest that the enhanced resistance to the CIP procedures by the dairy Bacillus isolates can be attributed to robust biofilm formation. In addition, this study underlines the importance of evaluating the efficiency of commercial cleaning agents in relation to strong biofilm-forming bacteria, which are relevant to industrial conditions. Consequently, we believe that the findings of this study can facilitate the assessment and refining of the industrial CIP procedures.

No abstract

We successfully generated clear amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) profiles of Anemone coronaria using only a single restriction enzyme (Eco R I). Four primer combinations generated 571 bands in 37 anemone accessions with an average 142.75 bands per primer combination. Polymorphism among the 37 samples was very high (98.15%). This high polymorphism showed that the one-enzyme AFLP method is effective for the assessment of genetic diversity as well as cultivar differentiation of anemone. We observed 26 bands which differentiated between fingerprints derived from leaf and corm DNA of eight plant individuals. However, the low percentage of such bands showed that anemone corms can also be used to evaluate anemone germplasm using AFLP markers.

Xanthomonas albilineans causes leaf scald disease, one of the most economically important diseases of sugarcane. Leaf scald is a systemic and vascular disease that can severely reduce productivity. The best and primary method of leaf scald control is the use of tolerant cultivars. Knowing that cell wall lignification is a plant defense mechanism and that chorismate mutase is relevant in this process, we analyzed the expression pattern of the chorismate mutase 2 (SoCM2) gene in two contrasting sugarcane cultivars by RT-qPCR. A similar pattern of downregulation for the SoCM2 gene was observed in both cultivars; however, after 72h, the tolerant cultivar (RB867515) showed repression of the SoCM2 gene, while for the susceptible cultivar (SP78-4467), SoCM2 gene downregulation occurred only after 144h. Here we propose that early T.M. repression of the SoCM2 gene is responsible for tolerance to X. albilineans infection in the sugarcane cultivar RB867515.

No abstract