Microbiological Safety of Food—2nd Edition

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Microbiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 2352

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Department of Science, Roma Tre University, viale G. Marconi 446, 00146 Rome
2. Interuniversity Consortium Biostructures and Biosystems National Institute (INBB), 00136 Rome, Italy
Interests: molecular mechanisms of metabolic control in eukaryotes and prokaryotes and their biotechnological applications on microbial detection
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Guest Editor Assistant
Department of Science, Roma Tre University, Viale Guglielmo Marconi 446, 00146 Rome, RM, Italy
Interests: food microbiology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the scale of food production and preservation today and the growing demand for healthy and high-quality products, food safety still represents a significant public health challenge, with 25% of all food produced for human consumption lost or wasted. A variety of bacteria, as well as viruses and parasites, can contaminate food, causing illness and death, and a high percentage of food is wasted due to microbial alteration. Contaminated food not only adversely affects people’s health but also has negative economic consequences. This stresses the importance of preventing and mitigating risks linked to food contamination by optimizing and adapting our monitoring programs and systems. Addressing this issue is a shared responsibility and requires collaboration between all the actors operating along the entire food chain, from production to consumption. Microbiological food control plays a central role in ensuring food quality and safety, and a more consistent and sustainable approach must be considered in order to allow producers to control production processes and final products throughout their entire shelf-life. This Special Issue will focus on different food categories, i.e., dairy, meat, and deli products and ready-to-eat fresh vegetables, and different methods utilized for food microbiological monitoring, i.e., from traditional culture-based methods up to new alternative analytical methods. Several research groups are investigating the microbiological safety of these products in order to verify the compliance with national and international regulations and study microbial communities during the shelf-life of food with the final aim of preventing and controlling contamination, thereby ensuring higher food standards and protection for consumers.

Prof. Dr. Giovanni Antonini
Guest Editor

Dr. Valentina Gallo
Guest Editor Assistant

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Keywords

  • food safety
  • food chain
  • food packaging
  • food preservation
  • food storage
  • microbiological control
  • analytical methods
  • shelf-life of dairy products
  • meat products
  • vegetables
  • ready-to-eat food

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 2038 KiB  
Article
Influence of Sporulation Temperature on Germination and Growth of B. weihenstephanensis Strains in Specific Nutrients and in an Extended Shelf-Life Refrigerated Matrix Under Commercial Pasteurization and Storage Conditions
by Víctor Freire, Lina Casañas, Luis Laborda, Santiago Condón and Elisa Gayán
Foods 2024, 13(21), 3434; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13213434 - 28 Oct 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 922
Abstract
Extended shelf-life (ESL) refrigerated ready-to-eat foods are thermally pasteurized to ensure food safety and stability. However, surviving psychrotrophic Bacillus cereus spores can still pose a challenge. Studies predicting their behavior often overlook sporulation conditions. This study investigated the effect of sporulation temperature on [...] Read more.
Extended shelf-life (ESL) refrigerated ready-to-eat foods are thermally pasteurized to ensure food safety and stability. However, surviving psychrotrophic Bacillus cereus spores can still pose a challenge. Studies predicting their behavior often overlook sporulation conditions. This study investigated the effect of sporulation temperature on germination of three Bacillus weihenstephanensis strains in specific nutrients (inosine and/or amino acids) with or without prior heat activation (80 °C, 10 min). Sporulation temperature variably affected germination, with stronger effects in moderately responsive strains and nutrients. Heat activation strongly stimulated germination, particularly in nutrients with poorer responses, mitigating differences induced by sporulation temperature. The influence of sporulation temperature on germination and growth in an ESL matrix at refrigeration temperatures (4 °C or 8 °C) in vacuum packaging after heat activation or commercial pasteurization (90 °C, 10 min) was also studied. The latter treatment increased germination rates of surviving spores; however, some strains suffered damage and lost viability upon germination at 4 °C but recovered and grew at 8 °C. These findings highlight the need to account for variability in spore recovery and outgrowth during quantitative risk assessments for psychrotrophic B. cereus in ESL foods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbiological Safety of Food—2nd Edition)
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15 pages, 2779 KiB  
Article
Deciphering the Cape Gooseberry Fruits Mycobiome for Further Safety Improvement Postharvest
by Gabriela N. Tenea and Diana Molina
Foods 2024, 13(20), 3248; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13203248 - 12 Oct 2024
Viewed by 911
Abstract
Cape gooseberries are exquisitely flavored fruits; their rapid deterioration reduces their shelf life. Understanding the unique mycobiome of fruit peels is an essential step in identifying the taxa causing postharvest loss. The current study proposes to analyze the fungal communities of cape gooseberry [...] Read more.
Cape gooseberries are exquisitely flavored fruits; their rapid deterioration reduces their shelf life. Understanding the unique mycobiome of fruit peels is an essential step in identifying the taxa causing postharvest loss. The current study proposes to analyze the fungal communities of cape gooseberry peels collected from an organic orchard at unripe and ripe stages and purchased from open-air market sites, using the ITS2 region metabarcoding. According to the Kruskal–Wallis test, there were no statistically significant differences found in either the phylogenetic or non-phylogenetic alpha diversity indices. Significant differences in fungal communities were observed between the market and orchard groups based on beta diversity results. Ascomycota (85.72–96.76%), Basidiomycota (3.21–13.91%), and Chytridiomycota (0.07–9.35%) were the most common fungal phyla, their abundance varying with the ripening stage and origin. Dothideomycetes in the orchard group and Saccharomycetes in the market group were the two most prevalent classes. Furthermore, we investigate which taxa showed a significant difference in abundance between the two conditions (market vs. orchard) using the analysis of compositions of microbiomes with bias correction (ANCOM-BC) test. Regardless of the phase, the orchard samples exhibited a notable increase in the mean absolute abundance of various beneficial fungal taxa, including Tilletiopsis washingtonensis and Articulospora proliferata, whereas the market samples demonstrated a high abundance of harmful yeasts and molds such as Meyerozyma guilliermondii, Candida railenensis, and Botrytis caroliniana. Although it is unclear how these microorganisms augment at the market sites and might impact the fruit quality after harvest, from a fruit safety perspective, it is essential to comprehend the diversity and variation of the mycobiome composition at different ripening stages to further develop strategies to improve food safety postharvest. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbiological Safety of Food—2nd Edition)
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