Smoking Impact on the Microbial Load of <i>Clarias gariepinus</i>

Abstract

Effects of different smoking methods on microbial load on freshly collected freshwater mud fish, Clarias gariepinus samples from Oyo State Fisheries Department, Ibadan in SouthWestern Nigeria was carried out. Seventy-two C. gariepinus (505 ± 0.45g and 25.5 ± 1.30cm) were collected and sorted into 4 groups. 10 fish samples from groups 1, 2 and 3 were subjected to cold smoking, hot smoking and oven drying methods respectively using group 4 as standard. Samples were tested for microbial loads in triplicate at the end of 24, 48 and 72 hrs. Some of the microbes identified were;

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“…The most common of all these processing techniques is smoke drying [50]. The combination of smoke, salt, and drying is considered to be one of the earliest methods of food preservation [49,51]. Unfortunately, these traditional methods have been confirmed to not be very effective in preventing microbial spoilage of harvested fishes [52].…”