Toxin production and antibiotic resistance of Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from market gardening products and their irrigation water in cotonou, Benin

Abstract Consumption of market gardening product has displayed several cases of food poisoning because they are being consumed raw often. This study aims to establish antibiotics resistance and toxins production profiles of Staphylococcus aureus strain isolated from market gardening products and irrigation water in Cotonou. In this regard, 4 kind of market gardening products (Lettuce, Carrot, Nightshade, and Cabbage) and 22 samples of irrigation water (pool, well and drilling water) were collected from four market gardeners and were analyzed. The S. aureus strains were identified using microbial method and classical biochemical tests. The antimicrobial susceptibility of 17 antibiotics was performed by the agar disk diffusion method. The toxins production was detected by the radial gel immunodiffusion method. Out of the 112 samples analyzed, 69.81% were contaminated by S. aureus. Market gardening products were contaminated by S. aureus at the rate of 82.44% and the irrigation water was at 17.56%. Among these products, nightshade was the most contaminated (32.79%), followed by lettuce (27.86%), cabbage (21.31%) and carrot (18.04%). Based on the type of water samples used, it appears that 53.85% of the well water contained S. aureus. Globally, the highest resistance proportion has been observed with lincomycin (62.06%) and none of the strains were resistant to ciprofloxacin, whereas about 20.69% of the strains were resistant to the methicillin (MRSA). ETA and LPV toxins were the most produced (32.69%) followed by ETB (28.85%), and LukE-D (5.77%). From the toxin-producing strains of S. aureus, 46.43% were MRSA. High contamination rate of toxins producer and resistant S. aureus strains isolated were recorded on market gardening products. It is important to promote monitoring and sensitizing farmers in aim to reduce the contamination rate of market gardening products.