Biodiversity of microbial food spoilers

• Biodiversity of bacterial food spoilers
• Biodiversity of fungal food spoilers
• Taxonomy, phylogeny of food spoilers
• Impact of new agricultural products and production methods (sustainability, organic farming, clean label, reduction of inputs) and climate change
• Friends or foes, starters/spoilers, spoiler/pathogen and quality indicators/pathogen boundaries

 

Physiology and metabolism

• Spoilers behavior, fitness and functional properties
• Fate of spoilers under stressful conditions
• Enzymatic activities and their becoming in food, secondary metabolites

 

Characterization methodologies, enumeration methods

• Spoilers characterization, detection and enumeration from raw materials to final products
• New methods: Omics, Maldi-TOF… applied (or applicable) to spoilage microorganisms

 

How to fight spoilers?

• Inactivation processes: Physical processes (heat treatments, Ohmic heating, Pulsed-light, high pressure treatments…)
• Chemical sanitation processes (cleaning in place, biocide use)
• Packaging: Active packaging, modified atmosphere packaging…
• Product stability assessment, Spoilage risk assessment
• Food industry concerns and needs