Model of the influence of time and mild temperature on Listeria monocytogenes nonlinear survival curves

Heat treatment has long been regarded as one of the most widely used and most effective means of destroying pathogens in food. Up to now the linear relationship between the death rate and the temperature has been used when choosing the best heat treatment to apply. However, the information given by this linear relationship is no longer sufficient when nonlinear survival curves are observed. Consequently, the agri-food industry needs a tool to choose the best mild heat treatment to apply in the case of nonlinear survival curves. This study deals with the temperature-induced death of Listeria monocytogenes CIP 7831 in the stationary phase of growth. Eleven temperatures were tested. With the proposed primary and secondary models good fits of our data were obtained. A model describing both the effect of the duration of treatment and the temperature on the logarithm of the number of survivors was then built. A clear increase in the precision of the estimation of the parameters was obtained with this model. Moreover, with this model a new graphical strategy to choose a mild heat increase regarding a maximal survivor number has been proposed.