Acronym BASIQS
Category
Marine Biotechnology
Title Bacterial solutions for improved food quality and safety Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator NA Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
ULE - University of Leon (Spain)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2021 End year 2023 Funding (€) € 149,500 Website NA Summary Despite the intense regimes employed for sanitation by the food industry, persistence of spoilage or pathogenic bacteria at food processing environments has been extensively documented in the literature. This may be due to the presence of harborage sites, difficult to clean or disinfect, or to some particular strain features, such as the ability to develop complex stress responses to survive under harsh environments, the capacity to form biofilms on processing surfaces and equipment and the increased resistance to disinfectants and other antimicrobials. Food business operators rely on in-plant validation, monitoring and verification activities to confirm the effectiveness of their cleaning and disinfection protocols and the hygiene status of their premises. Metagenomic-based approaches for mapping the food production environments are being currently explored in several world leading labs in the food microbiome field, including by the principal investigator of the project in the frame of the national research project which originates this proof of concept project. Microbiome mining studies carried in the previous research project targeting food processing environments have allowed the construction of a valuable collection of microbial strains, including some persistent ones with high environmental robustness and biocidal resistance profile, hence with a huge potential to be used as surrogate microorganisms in community standards for in-plant validation processes (trl2). In basiqs, we will build on this resource to develop a series of prototyped microbial consortia, validated in a relevant environment (trl5) and which will be available for validation of sanitation regimes and environmental monitoring activities at food processing facilities. The specific aims of the proof of concept will be (i) to rationally design a series of microbial consortia tailored to different food production sectors; (ii) to check their technological viability in terms of the inter-strain compatibility, survival ability along the production process and establishment of an estimated shelf life as commercial products; (iii) to test their performance in a relevant environment (pilot plant) in a range of scenarios (under different sanitation regimes and using different microbiome testing methods); (iv) to carry out a demonstration of its potential with food business operators; and (v) to evaluate the market and commercial viability of the designed products and build a business plan for progressing towards their commercialization in the frame of a potential spin-off company.
Keywords
Food products;
Metagenomic;
Microbiome;
Microbial communities;
Food safety;
Monitoring;
Genetic;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
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