Microbial quality of Khoa and Khoa based milk sweets from different sources

A total 66 samples of Indian indigenous milk sweets such as khoa (27), burfi (10), gulabjamun (10), kalakand (9) and peda (10) were collected from local vendors, private manufacturers and organized dairies for enumeration of total viable bacterial count, coliform count, psychotropic count, aerobic spore farmers, yeast and mould count, isolation and identification of mould species were also carried out. The total viable bacterial count, yeast and mould count of local vendor’s samples were higher than private manufacturers and organized dairies. The occurrence of Aspergillus sp. isolated from Khoa samples was found to be the highest (63.08%) followed by Penicillium sp.(17.38%), Rhizopus sp.(10.86%), Fusarium sp (4.34%) and Mucor sp. (4.34%). However the occurrence of Aspergillus sp. isolated from Khoa based milk sweet samples was also found to be highest (70.90%) followed by Penicillium sp.(15.11%), Rhizopus sp. (9.30%), Mucor sp.(3.48%) and Fusarium sp. (1.16%) respectively. The higher microbial load of these local vendor’s products may be due to contamination at various sections of production and until marketing of the finished products. It can be concluded that regular quality assessment programme together with good manufacturing practices, would pave the way to maintain safety and quality of various indigenous milk products.