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This overprocessing decreases quality and nutritional value, driving consumers to choose less safe, minimally processed foods.This project develops computer models for spore germination and links them to physiological events to provide a basis for more realistic processes which would increase quality without sacrificing safety. Models are usually developed by observing a few samples having low spore numbers.
Spores are dormant bacterial life forms extremely resistant to unfavorable environments. During "Germination" spores reactivate and become vegetative cells which can cause foodborne diseases such as botulism. To prevent this, foods are grossly overprocessing to meet "worst case" scenarios for spore germination. This overprocessing decreases quality and nutritional value, driving consumers to choose less safe, minimally processed foods. Thus, existing models assume statistical equivalence (i.e. that 10,000 samples). Recent reports of "quorum sensing" suggest that bacteria may be influenced by the action of nearby microbes, thus invalidating this assumption. This project determines the probability of C. botulinum spore germination as influenced by acidity, salt, and incubation temperature and how this probability is influenced by spore population density. The behavior of different sized spore populations is simulated by computer. Finally, the computer model is validated using experimental results. Mathematical models represent the ultimate rapid method, obtaining "results" before the "experiment" is done. The research proposed here may improve all food preservation processes which target spore-forming organisms.