title: Characterization of food spoilage fungi by FTIR spectroscopy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of the study was to evaluate a high-throughput liquid microcultivation protocol and FTIR spectroscopy for the differentiation of food spoilage filamentous fungi.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For this study, fifty-nine food-related fungal strains were analysed. The cultivation of fungi was performed in liquid medium in the Bioscreen C microtitre plate system with a throughput of 200 samples per cultivation run. Mycelium was prepared for FTIR analysis by a simple procedure, including a washing and a homogenization step. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to study affinity among the different species. Based on the hierarchical cluster analysis, a classification and validation scheme was developed by artificial neural network analysis. The classification network was tested by an independent test set. The results show that 93.9 and 94.0% of the spectra were correctly identified at the species and genus level, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of high-throughput liquid microcultivation protocol combined with FTIR spectroscopy and artificial neural network analysis allows differentiation of food spoilage fungi on the phylum, genus and species level.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The high-throughput liquid microcultivation protocol combined with FTIR spectroscopy can be used for the detection, classification and even identification of food-related filamentous fungi. Advantages of the method are high-throughput characteristics, high sensitivity, low costs and relatively short time of analysis.
authors.affiliation: Nofima AS, Ås, Norway. volha.shapaval@nofima.no
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shapaval
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schmitt
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Møretrø
authors.forename: H P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Suso
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Skaar
authors.forename: A W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Åsli
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lillehaug
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kohler
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005506:Food Contamination; D005516:Food Microbiology; D005658:Fungi / Q000145:classification* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared