Assessment of bacterial contamination of irrigation water and market gardening products at Parakou (A city in northern Benin)

Abstract

In many districts of Benin, the use of wastewater in urban agriculture is becoming more and more widespread. This activity around wastewater discharges potentially poses health risks to populations. As water is one of the main sources of food contamination in developing countries, the main objective of this study, oriented towards the assessment of the bacterial load, was to search for Salmonella which are pathogenic to humans in irrigation water as well as in some market gardening products consumed in Parakou district. The study was carried out on the market gardening perimeter of the slaughterhouse site located near the international market Arzèkè, where market gardeners exclusively use surface water from the mixture of groundwater and runoff from installed collectors. At the end of this study, the results from the observation of the different colonies, followed by biochemical tests for the detection and differentiation of Salmonella, allowed us to detect the presence of Salmonella in the different samples ranging from 50% to 80%. The presence of Fecal coliforms and Escherichia coli not only in water but also in market garden products was also confirmed. These results might partly explain the frequency of salmonellosis in the study area.