Sequino, Giuseppina (2024) Metagenomics and Big-Data approaches for monitoring food quality and safety. [Tesi di dottorato]

	Testo Sequino_Giuseppina_36_COMPLETO.pdf Visibile a [TBR] Amministratori dell'archivio Download (8MB)
Anteprima	Testo Sequino_Giuseppina_36_PARZIALE.pdf Download (3MB) | Anteprima

Abstract

Food quality and safety represent the cornerstones of a thriving and sustainable food system. Even though modern food processing facilities are designed to reduce the risk and likelihood of producing spoiled or unsafe produces, they are not abiotic but vulnerable to colonization by microbes from various sources. These complex microbial consortia may include microbial spoilers, pathogens, as well as beneficial microbes that can be transferred to the food product or intermediates of production during handling, manufacture and processing and therefore selected by the storage conditions (e.g. temperature and gaseous atmosphere). In this thesis, metagenomics was applied to explore the microbiome involved in the spoilage dynamics of different fresh foods, with a particular focus on the presence of spoilage-associated activities or genes related to pathogenesis or safety concerns (e.g., antibiotic resistance and virulence potential), also evaluating the effects of different packaging and storage conditions. Furthermore, microbiome mapping in food processing environments was also carried out to identify possible contamination routes. Our comprehensive exploration highlighted that an environmentally-adapted microbiome colonizes the surfaces of equipment and tools and strongly affect the microbial composition of the final food products, showing that food contact (FC) surfaces can be contaminated by organic matter that could support growth of microorganisms to high levels and/or the formation of biofilms on those parts of these food contact surfaces which are difficult to clean. In addition, different packaging and storage conditions were found to affect the microbial association and consequently the spoilage process and can be used to inhibit or retard the growth of specific spoilage organisms (SSOs) in order to avoid the accumulation of microbial metabolites that determines food spoilage. This procedure might support quality and safety management plans in the near future, also helping food business operators to reduce spoilage-caused food loss and make the food industry more sustainable.

Downloads

Actions (login required)

Modifica documento