title: A Focus on the Death Kinetics in Predictive Microbiology: Benefits and Limits of the Most Important Models and Some Tools Dealing with Their Application in Foods.
abstract: Predictive Microbiology (PM) deals with the mathematical modeling of microorganisms in foods for different applications (challenge test, evaluation of microbiological shelf life, prediction of the microbiological hazards connected with foods,etc.). An interesting and important part of PM focuses on the use of primary functions to fit data of death kinetics of spoilage, pathogenic, and useful microorganisms following thermal or non-conventional treatments and can also be used to model survivors throughout storage. The main topic of this review is a focus on the most important death models (negative Gompertz, log-linear, shoulder/tail, Weibull, Weibull+tail, re-parameterized Weibull, biphasic approach,etc.) to pinpoint the benefits and the limits of each model; in addition, the last section addresses the most important tools for the use of death kinetics and predictive microbiology in a user-friendly way.
authors.affiliation: Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia, Via Napoli 25, 71122 Foggia, Italy. antonio.bevilacqua@unifg.it.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bevilacqua
authors.affiliation: Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia, Via Napoli 25, 71122 Foggia, Italy. barbara.speranza@unifg.it.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Speranza
authors.affiliation: Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia, Via Napoli 25, 71122 Foggia, Italy. milena.sinigaglia@unifg.it.
authors.forename: Milena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sinigaglia
authors.affiliation: Department of the Science of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Foggia, Via Napoli 25, 71122 Foggia, Italy. mariarosaria.corbo@unifg.it.
authors.forename: Maria Rosaria
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Corbo
keywords: drawbacks; inactivation kinetics; software; use