A.P. Hansen

Microflora of raw cacao beans

Whole non-moldy cacao beans from 14 sources cultured on Czapeks agar with six percent NaCl yielded species ofAspergillus glaucus group,Mucor pusillus and unidentified yeast and bacteria. The average number of bacterial colonies from the 14 sources of non-moldy cacao beans was 32.7 million per gram. The average number of colonies of filamentous fungi in dilution cultures was 57,000 colonies per gram. Yeast colonies were present in the amount of 15.8 million colonies per gram. The moldy beans analyzed contained fungi and bacterial counts in the billions; also, yeast was not isolated from the moldy samples.