Mathematical Modeling of Thermal Death Kinetics of Bacteria and Spores in Ready-to-Eat and Minimally Processed Foods

Abstract

The study describes the mathematical model, providing a generalized view, of a thermal-dying bacterium, and bacterial spores in read-to-eat and minimally processed foods (RTE). Known microbial cultures of Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enterica, and Bacillus subtilis and Clostridium sporogenes were subjected to test (455 CM University) of these to controlled thermal conditions within food matrices under both isothermal and noneisothermal experiments between 55-. Kinetic data were fit to log-linear, Weibull shaped, biphase Arrhenius forms to determine D-values, z-values, shape parameters and activation energies. It has been demonstrated that microbial inactivation is not a first-order reaction of food matrix composition with microbial heterogeneity protecting effect. Better fits (R 2angers > 0.97, RMSE < 0.15) by biphasic and Weibull models than by log-linear models were seen by adapting shoulder and tailing curves when considering a survival curve. The activation energies were 358459 kJ mol and the resistance of the spores was 20-25-fold of that of the vegetative cells. The correlation with the lethality dynamics was demonstrated to be both valid and to have factors of bias and accuracy closeness to one by using non isothermal validation of combined WeibullArrhenius model. These findings lead to the overly significant role of non-linear thermal models in ensuring microbial safety without a high tendency to influence the quality losses of product during industrial heat treatments. This paper develops a reasonable predictor of thermal processing parameter in RTE foods as an alternative to inform science-based design of food safety within the framework of microbiological kinetics, thermodynamic model, and process engineering.