Food safety is a primary concern for post-harvest horticultural produce,particularly green leafy vegetables,with recent food-borne disease outbreaks in the USA associated with spinach,lettuce and sprouts.Enterococcus faecalis has been suggested as a faecal contamination indicator as mammalian faeces is a primary source of this microorganism.In addition,Enterococcus spp.can cause post harvest spoilage of horticultural produce due to the production of fermentative organic acids.Conventional methods for the presumptive detection of Enterococcus are based on selective growth enrichment and isolation on chromogenic indicator media.