Cm1127

The morphological and biochemical identification and quantification of S. aureus were carried out following ISO 6888-1:1999/Amd.2:2018 [44 ] procedures to enumerate CPS with minor modifications (Figure 5). In brief, a weight of 25 g of the purchased raw chicken meat of each sample separately was combined with sterilized buffered peptone water (225 mL; 0.1%, w/v), and the combination was mixed for 2 min in a stomacher (Masticator IUL, Barcelona, Spain) at 200 rpm. After that, a tenfold serial dilution (10⁻⁵–10⁻⁸) was prepared using 1 mL of the homogenate, and a volume of 100 µL of each dilution was spread onto Baird Parker agar medium enriched with egg yolk tellurite emulsion (5%; BP-EY; Oxoid CM1127). After 48 h of incubation at 37 °C, a morphological characterization was conducted to inspect black or dark grey colonies with halo zones and selected as typical colonies for S. aureus [45 (link)]. Five typical colonies were selected from each BP-EY-positive culture, inoculated into a sterilized brain heart infusion broth (10 mL; Oxoid, UK), incubated at 37 °C for 24 h, and then subjected to hemolytic, coagulase, and catalase activities tests [46 (link)]. For further confirmation, it was identified by MALDI TOF MS Biotyper (Brucker, Germany) following the methodological procedure for preparing samples and identification methods of Kmeť et al. [47 (link)].