## 3 Results and Discussion
### Kinetics of Bacterial Growth
coli_ recorded in the experiments and fitted by models developed for different garlic treatment conditions, are depicted in Figure 2a-l. The growth patterns of the bacteria exposed to the garlic extracts were well-represented by the developed models. The values of model parameters, reflecting the lag time (\(\tau_{lag}\)), the maximum rate of exponential growth (\(\mu_{max}\)), and the total bacterial population increase (\(\Delta_{max}OD\)), offered valuable quantitative metrics for comparing the effectiveness of different extracts against the strain under investigation. The values of these parameters are presented in Table 1.  
Regarding the parameter estimates, the highest values of the maximum bacterial growth rate and the highest OD level in the stationary phase were observed in samples without the addition of garlic extracts, whereas _E. coli_ activation in these tests occurred relatively quickly, after approximately 2 h.  
Figure 1: Graphical presentation of the dynamics of _Escherichia coli_ ATCC 25922 growth, expressed as optical density at 600 nm (OD\({}_{600 nm}\)), on nutrient broth with 2% glucose over time. The solid lines represent the predictive model responses, while the empty points denote mean values of experimental data. Bars represent standard deviation (SD) of six measurements. Figure 2: Graphical presentation of the dynamics of _Escherichia coli_ ATCC 25922 growth, expressed as optical density at 600 nm (OD\({}_{300 nm}\)), on nutrient broth with 2% glucose supplemented with 2% (**–d**), 0.5% (**–h**), and 0.29% (**–l**) extracts based on raw (**a**,**e**,**i**) or dried at 50 ° (**h**,**d**), 70 ° (**c**,**g**,**k**), and 90 ° (**c**,**d**,**h**) garlic over time. The solid lines represent the predictive model responses, while the empty points denote mean values of experimental data. Bars represent standard deviation (SD) of six measurements. The subsequent outcomes obtained in the study showed that the addition of garlic extracts to the growth medium significantly influenced the growth kinetics of the studied _E. coli_ strain, but this influence was primarily observed as a delay in bacterial activity (Figure 3a-c). Each applied concentration of garlic extracts meaningfully (MS = 159.9, \(p\) < 0.0001) inhibited the activation of the tested bacteria by extending the lag time from 2 h for control samples without garlic extract to 4 h for samples containing 0.25% extract and to 6-7 h for samples containing 0.5% extract. The 2% extract concentration proved to be the most effective, as it entirely prevented bacterial development. Garlic extracts also significantly affected the growth rate of the tested strain (MS = 0.069, \(p\) < 0.0001), suggesting that garlic compounds may interfere with microbial metabolism and replication. Nevertheless, in samples with 0.25% and 0.5% extract content, the growth rate was only slightly slower compared to control samples, and only 2% of the extract content caused the bacterial growth rate to drop to zero. A similar statistically significant impact of garlic extracts (MS = 0.041, \(p\) < 0.0001) was observed in the case of the total increase in bacterial population density. The values for samples containing 0.5% and 0.25% extracts were comparable to samples without garlic extracts, while the addition of 2% extract decreased the total increase in bacterial population to almost zero. The results presented in previous studies suggest that garlic thermal treatment can influence illicit content and, thus, its antimicrobial activity [25; 33]. Nevertheless, in our study, statistical analysis revealed that garlic drying temperature had no impact on the estimated kinetic parameters of the tested bacterial strain, as all parameters recorded for samples with the same garlic extract concentration were similar (regardless of the thermal conditions of the drying process) to those computed for samples based on raw garlic.