Abstract
Recent developments in preservation technologies allow for the delivery of food with nutritional value and superior taste. Of special interest are low-acid, shelf-stable foods in which the complete control or inactivation of bacterial endospores is the crucial step to ensure consumer safety. Relevant preservation methods can be classified into physicochemical or physical hurdles, and the latter can be subclassified into thermal and nonthermal processes. The underlying inactivation mechanisms for each of these physicochemical or physical processes impact different morphological or molecular structures essential for spore germination and integrity in the dormant state. This review provides an overview of distinct endospore defense mechanisms that affect emerging physical hurdles as well as which technologies address these mechanisms. The physical spore-inactivation technologies considered include thermal, dynamic, and isostatic high pressure and electromagnetic technologies, such as pulsed electric fields, UV light, cold atmospheric pressure plasma, and high- or low-energy electron beam.
Highlights
Humankind has faced the challenge of food preservation for thousands of years
Some bacteria form highly resistant bacterial spores, which are the perfect vehicles for spoiling food or infecting humans, in response to stress conditions
The exact mechanisms leading to spore inactivation under dynamic high pressure (HP) treatment are not entirely understood (Dumay et al 2013, Sevenich & Mathys 2018), but it is presumably due to a combination of the physical effects of pressure and temperature
Summary
Humankind has faced the challenge of food preservation for thousands of years. One of the presumably oldest methods is preservation by heat, which includes simple methods, such as cooking and roasting, or combinations of thermal and chemical preservation methods, such as smoking. This information could enable a multihurdle sterilization concept for minimally processed food that reduces spore resistance properties by triggering spore germination (Zhang & Mathys 2019) or physicochemical hurdles, such as nisin or lysozyme; the molecular targets of these spores are similar to those of vegetative cells, allowing a lower process intensity to be applied.
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