Various essential oils have the potential as food antimicrobials and antioxidants. A recent concept for industrial exploitation for food preservation involves the use of essential oils in the gas or vapour phase, making them applicable in packaged food to modify the atmosphere. Once optimised, this approach is seen as a promising strategy for prolonging shelf life.

In contrast to well-established assay methods for testing antimicrobial susceptibility in solid (agar disc diffusion) and liquid (MIC by broth microdilution) media, there are no standardised methods for determining microbial sensitivity to volatile compounds in the vapour phase. The ISI laboratory has recently developed a test system capable of assessing the industrial potential of essential oils (EOs) against relevant spoilage microorganisms and food pathogenic bacteria. This system allows high throughput, enabling extensive screening with a broad range of EOs to be performed, and hereby fast optimisation for industrial exploitation.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more about this.

The market for plant-based food alternatives is expanding rapidly, both in new product types and in total volumes.

Sales of plant-based foods in 2022 grew by 6.6 % in U.S. and by 6 % in Europe, and 21 % from 2020 to 2022 in Europe (GFI Europe). To date, hybrid products consisting of meat and plant protein blends are also becoming more attractive among consumers, and new products are being developed to reduce consumption of proteins from animals.

The new products being developed also bring new challenges in terms of safety and stability over shelf-life.

We, at ISI Food Protection, provide modern sequencing techniques to detect the entire microbial population in food products, to help you with optimising product formulation and accelerate product development.

Molecular DNA-based sequencing analyses of bacteria associated with plant material are often confounded by the presence of chloroplastidial DNA, i.e., abundant DNA from the plant chloroplasts which resembles and outcompetes the bacterial DNA. To overcome this, scientists at ISI Food Protection developed a customised protocol which blocks the amplification of chloroplastidial DNA with the goal of enhancing amplification of the bacterial community.

We develop and customise our methods to respond to new market trends, to provide the most informative results for our customers.

Please get in contact with us if you would like to know more about what we can do.

Since 2013, ISI Food Protection complements classical microbiological analyses of the microbial microflora with more advanced molecular tools to provide the most accurate picture of the population of bacteria, yeasts and moulds in a sample.

Independent of cultivation, by direct extraction of the whole DNA present in the sample, targeted metagenomic analyses provides rapid identification of all the microorganisms present in the sample.

Thanks to more than 10 years of experience in this field, we have collected an enormous amount of data and gained tremendous knowledge in the interpretation of the microflora in food and feed samples. Our experience enables us to keep up with the advances in new sequencing technologies for metagenomics: we are leading the transition of the analyses in the food sector from next generation sequencing methods to third generation sequencing methods.

Third generation sequencing methods (as the Oxford Nanopore sequencing Technology) have minimal sample processing, smaller equipment and increased sequencing speed, thus decentralising sequencing and opening the door to on-site metagenomics analysis. When established directly along the production line, new sequencing methods allow for rapid identification of the microflora and faster interventions in the supply chain, increasing the awareness of quality of raw materials and ingredients.

 

Please get in contact with us if you would like to know more of what we can do.

ISI Food Protection has implemented a new qPCR method for the qualitative detection of botulinum type A, B, E and F neurotoxin-producing Clostridia (Clostridium botulinum, C. baratii and C. butyricum) using real-time PCR instruments.

This method has been accredited by DANAK. This means that we have two accredited methods for the detection of Clostridium botulinum:

• Foodproof® Clostridium botulinum Detection LyoKit produced by Biotecon Diagnostic
• SureFast® Clostridium botulinum Screening PLUS produced by CONGEN

Clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic, endospore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium, which can cause botulism. Botulinum toxins are the most potent bacterial toxins known and may occur in inadequately preserved foods, such as canned or cured meat. Children are especially vulnerable and can become seriously ill after consuming food contaminated with spores, such as honey or milk powder.
The Foodproof Clostridium botulinum Detection LyoKit detects all human-relevant toxin genes – types A, B, E and F – in a single multiplex real-time PCR reaction.