5. Future trends

and Food Quality Technology approach, connecting science with engineering components, will provide a systematized knowledge, and a consistent design of hurdle strategy is more likely to emerge. Moreover, the complexity of the phenomena and its practical importance to food safety and quality requires qualification and quantification of these responses. This integration of the appropriate disciplines and the new and exciting tools that they offer will undoubtedly result in a reduction not only of pathogen risk and spoilage microorganism incidence but also of uncertainty.

Booming "genomic" technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) contribute to the understanding of cellular behavior by a simultaneous approach in which the whole set of cellular biomolecules is studied in a given experimental setup. Cellular response at molecular level can then be used to study cellular physiology of cellular reactions to environmental conditions, supporting the

The so-called predictive microbiology not only allows comparing the impact of different environmental stress factors/levels on reduction or growth inhibition of microbial population but also allows understanding microbial behavior in a systematic way [36, 37]. The model prediction of survival curves would be beneficial to the fruit industry in selecting the optimum combinations/doses of preservation agents to obtain desired levels of impact on microbial (pathogenic and spoilage organisms) behavior with minimal effects on costs and quality [19]. Sensory selection of preservation factors and their levels may be done between several "safe" equivalent

The microorganisms may die, survive, adapt, or grow when mild preservation factors or stressors are applied. Sublethal damage and subsequent recovery present a big problem to manufacturing industry and catering service in terms of safety and spoilage. Microbial populations are heterogeneous. Different cells may exhibit chemical differences (they can be in different reproductive phases or in different physiological states due to differences in nutrient availability and/or environmental conditions). Also, sharing of genetic material results in the existence of genetically different individuals [38]. Using methods of multiparameter flow cytometry (FC), it is now possible to characterize the physiology of individual microorganisms. By means of both scattering and fluorescence signal measurements, information on cell parameters (physiological state, such as metabolic activity, internal pH, or integrity of cytoplasmic membrane—size, surface roughness, and granularity) at single-cell level and their distribution within cell population is provided with a relatively high degree of statistical resolution (≈5000–50,000 cells in minute), enabling assess-

Evaluation of the response of microorganisms and the changes in quality during

a period of storage similar to the shelf life required is essential since the major changes in quality attributes due to these techniques generally occur not after processing but during storage. Regarding microorganisms, different patterns of microbial growth in nondecontaminated and decontaminated minimally processed vegetables reported in the literature were identified by Gómez-López et al. [40], evidencing the difficulties to control microbial loads of these products during stor-

• No decontamination occurred, but the growth rate of microorganisms in

• No decontamination occurred, but microorganisms in treated samples

treated samples was slower than that in untreated samples.

exhibited a longer lag phase than that in untreated samples.

development of effective food preservation processes.

Technology, Science and Culture - A Global Vision, Volume II

combinations of interactive effects determined by the models.

ment of population heterogeneity [39].

age at low temperatures:

20

3.1 Microbial aspects

