Advanced Killing Potential of Thymol against a Time and Temperature Optimized Attached Population in Lettuce Broth.

Fresh vegetables and salads are increasingly implicated in outbreaks of foodborne infections, such as those caused by , a dangerous pathogen that can attach to the surfaces of the equipment creating robust biofilms withstanding the killing action of disinfectants. In this study, the antimicrobial efficiency of a natural plant terpenoid (thymol) was evaluated against a sessile population of a multi-strain cocktail developed on stainless steel surfaces incubated in lettuce broth, under optimized time and temperature conditions (54 h at 30.6 °C) as those were determined following response surface modeling, and in comparison, to that of an industrial disinfectant (benzalkonium chloride).