FOOD 3230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Quorum Sensing, Siderophore

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Food Science
• Course: FOOD 3230
• Professor: Unknown

Document Summary

This unit discusses the use of microorganisms as indicators to assess sanitation and quality of food, exposing some indicators used for this purpose and theirs main characteristics. Indicators are organisms whose presence in foods may be used to asses existing quality and safety or to predict product shelf life. For example, growth and numbers of quality indicator should have a direct negative correlation with product quality; or safety indicators should be organisms whose numbers ideally correlate with those of the pathogen of concern. Total aerobic count is used as an indicator to determine general microbiological quality. Psychrotrophic count is used as an indicator of microorganisms (bacteria, yeast and molds) that grow in food at refrigeration temperatures. Pseudomonas is a genus of aerobic gram-negative whose members are able to colonize a wide range of niches. They are known to cause spoilage in food at low temperatures through the secretion of a variety of enzymes.