Modeling Virus Inactivation on Salad Crops Using Microbial Count Data

Susan R. Petterson, Peter F. M. Teunis and Nicholas J. Ashbolt

Risk Analysis, 2001, vol. 21, issue 6, 1097-1108

Abstract: Microbial counts of the persistentBacteroides fragilis bacteriophage B40‐8 from a virus decay experiment conducted under glasshouse conditions were used to model the decay of viruses on wastewater‐irrigated lettuce and carrot crops. The modeling approach applied gave specific consideration to the discrete nature of microbial count data. The experimental counts were best fit by a negative binomial distribution indicating highly dispersed distribution of viruses on lettuce and carrot crops following irrigation with wastewater. In addition, there was evidence for biphasic inactivation of viruses, signifying the presence of a persistent subpopulation of viruses that decayed slowly, resulting in virus accumulation on the crop surface over subsequent irrigations. Maximum likelihood estimates of initial and persistent subpopulation inactivation rates were 2.48 day−1 and 0.51 day−1 for lettuces and 0.84 day−1 and 0.046 day−1 for carrots. Maximum likelihood estimates of the persistent virus subpopulation size were 0.12% and 2% for lettuce and carrots, respectively.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/0272-4332.216178

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:21:y:2001:i:6:p:1097-1108

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().