## 1 Introduction  
A wide range of microbes, with distinct phylogenetic structure, is associated with the aerial organs (phyllosphere) of plants through parasitic or symbiotic interactions; in particular, bacteria are the most common microorganisms colonizing plant phyllosphere in comparison to fungi and archaea. The bacterial communities associated with edible leafy vegetables are less diversified than those of farm soil and coastal seawater habitats [1]. Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria are the predominant bacterial phyla present in ready-to-eat (RTE) leafy vegetables (which are consumed raw, either treated or minimally processed) [2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. The core bacterial genera identified in most studies are _Pseudomonas_, _Sphingomonas_, _Methylobacterium_, _Bacillus_, _Massilia_, _Arthobacter_, and _Pantoea_[2; 3]. Human pathogens mostly associated with RTE leafy vegetables include _Escherichia coli_ O157:H7, _Listeria monocytogenes_, and _Salmonella_ spp. [7; 8], but these are greatly affected by the vegetable type and bacterial community structure [9; 10]. Lettuce and spinach are minimally processed RTE vegetables highly susceptible to colonization by foodborne pathogens [11]; therefore, various post-harvest sanitizing washing strategies are generally implemented to reduce spoilage and eliminate human pathogens. Today, the effectiveness of a post-harvest sanitizer is assessed based on its effect on the overall microbial populations, in addition to its propensity to reduce the microbial load and eliminate foodborne pathogens [12]. The composition of the microbiome community is assessed because the microbiome present on fresh produce is not only responsible for spoilage but rather acts as a natural biological barrier against spoilage organisms and pathogens, which constitute a smaller subset of the whole soil microbial population [13; 14; 15]. Furthermore, the bacterial microbiota on the surface of the plant inhibits or inactivates the growth of bacterial pathogen by producing acidic antimicrobial peptides and other secondary metabolites [16; 17; 18] that adversely affect the survival of the pathogen [19]. Bacterial population on RTE spinach is generally assessed using traditional culture-based techniques or specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect pathogens known for public health risk and quantify the population of indicator bacteria. Molecular techniques such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and terminal restriction length polymorphism have been used for the analysis of 165 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene to understand the bacterial community of the phyllosphere on spinach leaves [20; 21; 22]. Contemporary next-generation sequencing techniques are now widely used for comprehensive analysis of the composition of bacterial community due to the increase in the depth of sequence readings and improved easier to use bioinformatics pipelines [23; 24]. This method, in addition to providing information on the community structure, provides insights into the association of bacterial phyllosphere diversity with environmental factors [6; 23], use of biocidal agents [6; 23], and pesticides [6; 25]. It also provides the interaction dynamics of the composition of the bacterial community with the various stages of plant growth, post-harvest, during processing and storage [3; 26; 27; 23]. For leafy vegetable processing, chlorine- or peroxyacetic acid (PAA)-based sanitizers are commonly used. Chlorine is used for its effectiveness and low cost, whereas PAA for its activity over a wide pH range and limited reaction with organic matter. Electrochemically activated solution (ECAS) with an approximately neutral pH (6.5-7.5) has been suggested as a promising alternative washing solution with disinfection capability comparable to that of other commonly used disinfection chemicals such as chlorine and PAA [28; 29; 30; 31; 32]. [PERSON] [28] reported that neutral ECAS containing 50 mg/L of free available chlorine (FAC), completely inactivated the total bacteria on leaf surface. [PERSON] et al.