Isolation, characterization and comparison of lytic Epseptimavirus phages targeting Salmonella

[Display omitted] •We present the genomic comparison of six lytic Epseptimavirus phages.•Representative phages effectively controlled Salmonella in tested food samples.•Genome analysis and experiments results indicate that phages were safe and stable.•Epseptimavirus phages can be used as the candidate agents in phage cocktail. This study describes the characterization and genomic analysis of six lytic Salmonella phages. To examine the feasibility of using these phages as biocontrol agents, we analyzed their genomes and compared them to those of similar phages. These six phages belong to genus Epseptimavirus, family Demerecviridae. We identified the genes of these six phages by comparing their genomes with those of three type phages in subfamily Markadamsvirinae. All six phages examined in this study were obligately lytic and did not carry undesirable genes. Two phages (vB_SalS_1-23 and vB_SalS_3-29) were selected as the representative phages for general characterization and physiological tests. The biocontrol efficacy of the representative phages was determined by comparing the viable counts of recovered host Salmonella ser. Newlands ZC-S1 from treatment and phage-free control samples. The biocontrol experiment showed that the representative phages were able to reduce the counts of ZC-S1 to below 2 log10 CFU/mL (~4.3 log10 CFU/mL reduction) at 3 h post-infection at 37 °C. Furthermore, we investigated the application of these two phages in the control of ZC-S1 contamination in chicken products and on eggshells. When applied to the surfaces of the samples, the phage cocktail (MOI = 100) reduced the ZC-S1 count to below 2 log10 CFU/mL on chicken skin and to undetectable levels (1 log10 CFU/mL) in chicken breast meat, ground chicken meat and eggshell samples (p