Feás Sánchez, XesúsPacheco, LázaroIglesias Becerra, AntonioEstevinho, Leticia M.2020-05-132020-05-132014Feás Sánchez, X., Pacheco, L., Iglesias Becerra, A. y Fernandes Estevinho, M.L.M. (2014). Use of propolis in the sanitization of lettuce. Int.J.Mol.Sci., vol. 15, 12243-12257http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22283The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of propolis in reducing the microbial load in ready-to-eat (RTE) and fresh whole head (FWH) lettuces (Lactuca sativa L.) type Batavia. Two sanitizing solutions were employed: sodium hypochlorite (SH) and propolis (PS), during 15 and 30 min. Tap water (TW) was used as a control. Regarding the mean reduction on aerobic mesophiles, psychrotrophic and fecal coliforms, the SH and PS treatments showed the same pattern of variation. In all cases, PS was slightly more effective in the microbiological reduction in comparison with commercial SH. Reductions between two and three log cycles were obtained with PS on aerobic mesophiles and psychrotrophic counts. The information obtained in the present study can be used to evaluate the potential use of propolis as product for sanitizing other vegetables and for developing other food preservation technologies, with impact on human healtheng© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/LettucePropolisSanitizationMicrobiological safetySodium hypochloritejournal article10.3390/ijms1507122431422-0067open access