Fate and survival of Campylobacter coli in swine manure at various temperatures

Campylobacter coli is the most common Campylobacter species found in pig(95%),but the ability of this bacterium to survive in swine manure as well as the potential for causing human illness are poorly understood. We present here laboratory-scale experiments to investigate the effect of temperature on the survival of C.coli in spiked swine manure samples at temperatures from 4 to 52˚C. The survival of C.coli during storage for 30 days was studied by three different methods: bacterial culture(plate counting),DNA qPCR, and mRNART-qPCR.The results indicate that C.coli could survive in swine manure up to 24 days at 4˚C. At higher temperatures,this bacterium survived only 7 days(15˚C)or 6 days(22˚C)of storage. The survival of C.coli was extremely short(few hours)in samples incubated at 42 and 52 ˚C. The results from the RT-qPCRmethodwereconsistentwiththedatafromthebacterialculturemethod, indicating that it detected only viable C.colicells,thus eliminating false-positive resulting from DNA from dead C.coli cells.