A Prototype Model Structure for Mixed Microbial Populations in Homogeneous Food Products

✍ Scribed by E.J DENS; K.M VEREECKEN; J.F VAN IMPE

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 285 KB
• Volume: 201
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.1999.1021

✦ Synopsis

An important factor which has not been included in many models in the "eld of predictive microbiology is the in#uence of a background of micro#ora in a food product. It is however generally known that the growth of a microorganism as a pure culture can be substantially di!erent from its growth in a mixed culture, due to microbial interactions. Because of the importance of these interactions and the lack of suitable modeling techniques in the "eld of predictive microbiology to describe them, the potential of models in other research "elds*namely ecology*to deal with interactions is explored in previous work of the authors. However, a model structure for microbial growth in food products cannot simply be copied from those elaborated in ecology. The structure of a predictive growth model is indeed typical, primarily due to the explicit modeling of a lag phase. The current paper proposes a prototype model structure for growth of mixed microbial populations in homogeneous food products. The model is able to describe a lag phase and reduces to a classical predictive growth model in the special case of single-species growth.