Manisa Celal Bayar University graduate school of educationdepartment of food engineering

As part of the thesis study, an investigation was conducted to determine whether microbiological analyses in a company producing soft candy and chewing gum could be reliably detected using rapid methods. For this purpose, the production lines of soft candy (marshmallow), soft candy (licorice), and chewing gum were examined, and production flow diagrams were created. Control points were identified, and swab samples were collected simultaneously using Total Microsnap (MS) for the rapid method and sterile swabs for the classical method. As control points, resting rack (cooling/drying shelf) (point 1), guillotine cutting area (cutter belt) (point 2) and rolling/twisting belt (forming conveyor) (point 3) were selected in the gum section. In the soft sugar (licorice sugar) section, the mold exit conveyor belt-1 (after de-molding) (point 4), cooling tunnel conveyor belt (point 5) and guillotine cutting belt surface (point 6) were selected. In the soft sugar (marshmallow) section, the guillotine cutting/transfer belt (point 7), dextrose coating drum (tumbler) (point 8) and transfer conveyor belt (to packaging) (point 9) are selected. The results obtained from both rapid and classical methods were evaluated in terms of total viable count. In this context, the effects of variables such as duration and analysis method after cleaning on logarithmic microbial charge (log₁₀kob/100cm²) were examined by two-way covariance analysis (ANCOVA) and two-way ANOVA. According to the results of the evaluation, the results determined by the fast method were determined to be 1±0.5 logarithmic units higher than the results determined by the classical method. Based on the success ranking, the R² values for the 1-9 sections were determined as 0.967, 0.917, 0.983, 0.977, 0.973, 0.981, 0.955, 0.871 and 0.842 respectively. The coefficient of pearson correlation between the two methods R²=0.97 was determined. The lowest microbial load was found in the soft candy (marshmallow) dextrose drum, and the highest microbial load was found in the gum (chewing gum) rolling/twisting (forming conveyor) belt band.