Food Microbiology
Food Microbiology
Food Microbiology
Introduction
• Food production occurs at specific areas and
at certain periods of the year due to variation
in weather conditions.
• Food therefore has to be collected and stored
for use during periods of low or no food
production.
• However, storage is complicated by the fact
that food begin to deteriorate shortly after
harvest, gather or slaughter.
Food spoilage
• D- value
• Z- value
• F-value
Decimal reduction Time (D-Value)
• Is the time required at any temperature to
destroy 90% of the spores or vegetative cells of a
given organism.
• The higher the temperature, the faster is the rate
of destruction and the shorter it takes to kill 90%
of the cells.
• For example, D-value for Clostridium sporogenes
in a given food at 120oC is 1 minutes, at 115oC is
4 minutes, at 110oC is 10 minutes.
D-Value cont..
• The larger the initial number of vegetative cells or
spores, the longer it will take to destroy 90 % of
the cells at a given temperature.
• D- value is numerically equal to the number of
minutes required for the survivor curve to
trasverse one log cycle.
• If the intial number is one million per ml, one log
cycle will reduce this number to 100 per ml.
Z-value
• The Z value: Is the number of degrees the
temperature has to be increased in order to
reduce the thermal death time tenfold.
• The z value is relatively constant and depends
very little upon the environment.
• For spores of bacteria, the z - value used is
10oC.
Z- value
• The spore killing effect of a heat treatment can
be expressed as a function of temperature and
the time the material has been exposed to
that heat.
• For example, when it takes 1 min to kill 90% of
the remaining spores at 120oC, it will take 10
min to obtain the same effect at 110oC, and it
will take 100oC.
F-value
• F-value. The F-value express the time taken to
expose food to the same amount of heat
required to destroy spores and vegetative cells
of a particular organism using different
temperatures.
• For example, food heated at 121.1oC for 2
minutes will give a value F=2. To get the same
F-value of 2 using 111.1oC, one needs to heat
the food for 20 min.
F-value
• Heating such a food at 111.1oC for 2 minutes
will give F value of 2/10 = 0.2.
• This means that one can obtain the same
killing effect of spores and /or vegetative cells
at a lower temperature, provided the time of
exposure is longer.
• Thus, F-value shows the heat treatment given
to a food product to destroy bacteria.
F-value
• As far as spore killing is concerned, F=1 is
equal to 1 min at 121oC (or 10 min at 111.1oC
or 100 min at 101.1oC.)
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