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ABSTRACT
Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crops grown all over Nigeria. It is the world’s largest vegetable crop after potato and sweet potato but it tops the list of canned vegetables. In Nigeria, tomato is regarded as the most important vegetable after onions and pepper. It is an important condiment in most diets and a very cheap source of vitamins. This experiment was designed to understand the effect of storage methods and duration of storage on the microbial composition and load of tomato fruits. The tomato fruits were sourced from New Benin market and Oba markets both in Benin City and stored using three different storage methods that is floor, basket and refrigerator for the period of twenty days. Microbial analysis was done on this stored tomato fruits during the period of storage at an interval of five days using a standard laboratory techniques. Data on microbial composition and load were taken during the period of storage. Results showed that the microbial load increase with period of storage with basket recording the highest and refrigerator being least. The fungi isolated include A. niger, A. flavus, Rhizopus, Penicillium spp., and yeast cells while the bacteria isolates includes Staphylococcus sp. E. coli, Samonella and Enterobacter spp. From this result, the refrigerator will extend the shelf life of tomato fruits and minimize the rate of spoilage due to microbial composition and load.
