الفهرس 
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Abstract
A total of 110 freshly slaughtered buffalo meat carcasses were randomly purchased during the period of October 2021 through February 2022 from different retail butchers ̓ shops. Conventional cultural and biochemical tests revealed that the prevalence of E. coli strains in 105 (95.4%), 90 (81.82%) respectively. While serological identification verified the prevalence of E. coli strains in 70(63.64%) of buffalo meat carcasses. • Serological identification was performed on 131 biochemical suspected E. coli isolates. Out of 131 biochemical suspected E. coli isolates, 74 serological identified E. coli isolated from buffalo meat carcasses into 6 different serotypes. E. coli O55:H7, O111:H8, O145 were the most predominant serotypes with contamination rates of 37. 84% (28/ 74), 21. 62% (16/74), 17. 57% (13/74) and 12.16% (9/ 74). On the other hand, the less predominant serotypes were E. coli O128:H2 and E. coli O126:H5 were the least recovered strains as they were identified in 6.76% (5/74)) and 4.05% (3/74). • The molecular confirmation of 74 serological identified E. coli isolated was performed using the Multiplex polymerase chain reaction assays for detection of E. coli virulence genes including stx1, stx2, eae and hlyA that were detected at expected molecular size of 614bp, 779 bp, 890bp, and 165bp, respectively with an overall incidence rates of 70.27% (52/74), 85.13% (63/74%), 81.1%(60/74) and 41.9%(31/74), respectively. • The antimicrobial susceptibility of 74 molecular confirmed E. coli isolates were tested against a panel of 16 antibiotics by using single diffusion method. All of 74 E. coli verified isolates exhibited absolute resistance to erythromycin (100% n=74/74).Generally, the average (MAR) index of E. coli isolates recovered from all buffalo meat samples examined was .397 and 72.97% (54/74) of them had higher MAR index than .200 reveals high contamination risk.