Germination and Growth of Spoilage Fungi

Fungi are ubiquitous in nature and have evolved, over time, to colonize a wide range of ecosystems, including foods, due to their limited requirements for nutrients. Airborne transfer of fungal spores is now seen as a significant route for contamination in many sectors of the food industry. If growth is permitted by environmental conditions, the colonization of foods results in spoiled products (visible mycelium and/or off-flavor development) and subsequent, significant economic losses. Within the domain of quantitative mycology, a series of research studies had been conducted on empirical descriptions of population kinetics (deterministic approaches), which did not take into account realistic events of contamination of foods with low numbers of fungal spores. However, in order to improve the predictive efficiency of the kinetic growth models, it is important to account for the heterogeneity that characterizes germination and growth kinetics of individual spores; since that would potentially provide important information with regard to the ability of a single spore to germinate, grow, and spoil a food product. Thus, studies which provide a quantitative description of the variability of single spore behavior, as affected by the environmental conditions, can be used as valuable tools for the prediction of the shelf life of foods susceptible to fungal spoilage or, additionally, they can constitute the basis for risk assessment of mould spoilage.