Microbiological Safety of Ornamental Edible Flowers
Ivan Ciliberti, Assunta De Lella, Anna Ardévol, Sanja Ćavar Zeljković, Francesco De Marco, Francesco Corvino, Lucia De Luca, Maria Aponte, Raffaele Romano · 2026
Read Microbiological Safety of Ornamental Edible Flowers by Ivan Ciliberti, Assunta De Lella, Anna Ardévol, Sanja Ćavar Zeljković, Francesco De Marco, Francesco Corvino, Lucia De Luca, Maria Aponte, Raffaele Romano (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13464742.txt.
Description
Ciliberti and co-authors examine the microbial safety of ornamental edible flowers in this 2026 study. Such flowers decorate plates, yet they are nearly impossible to wash without bruising. They are eaten raw. So the bacteria and fungi riding along reach the person who eats them.
Every sample carried heavy microbial loads. Enterobacteriaceae dominated, along with Pseudomonas relatives, coliforms, yeasts, and molds. No primary foodborne pathogens turned up, though. Five days of cold storage at 4 degrees Celsius greatly raised the counts. Storage was the strongest driver of change, ahead of flower type and production source. Opportunistic species with disease potential appeared in pansies. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a real infection risk for vulnerable people, turned up in snapdragon. Petal color even shaped which microbes thrived in some flowers.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ivan Ciliberti, Assunta De Lella, Anna Ardévol, Sanja Ćavar Zeljković, Francesco De Marco, Francesco Corvino, Lucia De Luca, Maria Aponte, Raffaele Romano |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 40 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |