Stellato, Giuseppina (2016) MAPPING THE MICROBIAL CONTAMINATION IN FOOD AND FOOD PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Item Type: Tesi di dottorato
Resource language: English
Title: MAPPING THE MICROBIAL CONTAMINATION IN FOOD AND FOOD PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT
Creators:
Creators
Email
Stellato, Giuseppina
giuseppina.stellato@unina.it
Date: 30 March 2016
Number of Pages: 133
Institution: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Department: Agraria
Scuola di dottorato: Scienze agrarie e agro-alimentari
Dottorato: Scienze e tecnologie delle produzioni agro-alimentari
Ciclo di dottorato: 28
Coordinatore del Corso di dottorato:
nome
email
Barbieri, Giancarlo
barbieri@unina.it
Tutor:
nome
email
Ercolini, Danilo
UNSPECIFIED
Date: 30 March 2016
Number of Pages: 133
Keywords: food spoilage, food processing environment, oligotyping, food microbiota
Settori scientifico-disciplinari del MIUR: Area 07 - Scienze agrarie e veterinarie > AGR/16 - Microbiologia agraria
Date Deposited: 08 Apr 2016 09:20
Last Modified: 06 May 2019 01:00
URI: http://www.fedoa.unina.it/id/eprint/10810

Collection description

The quality and food safety has always been an object of study for microbiology. For this reason, research is focused on both microorganisms of technological interest responsible for metabolic processes, such as fermentation, and important to define the sensory characteristics of the finished product, and food-spoilers microorganisms, that are responsible for the food spoilage. The microorganisms that inhabit the food processing environments play also an important role, since cross-contamination phenomena can occur during the processing phases. Monitoring the presence of spoilage microorganisms in food-processing environment, can be very usefull in order to prevent the spread along the processing chain and consequently the transition to the finished product, preserving the food quality and safety. The methodological approach to study the microbiota has changed and microbial species and strains can be identified and monitored with higher levels of speed, reliability and sensitivity The aim of the present work was the study of the microbiota of different dairy manufactures, fresh meat and surface samples from the related processing environments by using the new culture-independent method based on high-performance sequencing (high-throughput sequencing, HTS). Different ecosystems were studied, in order to investigate the microbiota composition and the specific role of the microorganisms in each food matrix and the possible overlap with the microbiota on utilized tools, equipment and processing surfaces. Several kind of dairy manufactures and meat, as well as environmental samples from surfaces and associated processing tools were taken into account. Moreover, a novel approach for of the identification of oligotypes present in foods and environments was used, focusing on the Pseudomonas genus. Oligotyping is a computational method that allows to explain the ecologically significant differences between closely related organisms, going over the species identification. Thanks to the different HTS approaches it was possible to obtain a complete image of the typical microbiome of certain food matrices and their processing environments. In the present study the presence of a selected core microbiota was identified, consisting of a few species well adapted to the considered environment. However a different distribution and varable relative abindance among the samplkes was observed between food and environment, and can be speculated that there is an influence by the environmental microbiota on the food matrices. The high-throughput sequencing demonstred to be a suitable approach to the study of the microbiota of dairy manifactures and meat, as well as for environmental samples from food processing surfaces, allowing to monitor the microbiota during the various stages of production. The characterization of the environmental microbiota and the understanding of the correlation between ecological factors and the microbiota of food are of crucial importance for the control of food quality and safety. Getting a description of the surface microbiota in the food processing plant and monitoring changes over time could represent a good start point to map the sources of contamination. Also understand the composition of the microbiota calling it beyond the species identification is a crucial step to investigate the diversity of microorganisms recognized as spoilers in the food industry. In this context, the dell'Oligotyping use allows in-depth analysis of microbial consortia in food and related environments.

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