Many chemical antimicrobials have been traditionally applied to both guarantee the safety of food and increase its shelf-life by inactivating and controlling pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms. Similarly, protective cultures or their metabolites can contribute to the food safety, being considered as an eco-friendly strategy of food preservation. Nowadays, there is a growing interest of food industry toward using natural products and reducing the use of synthetic preservatives because of the consumers’ requests since chemical additives have raised concerns. Biopreservatives, such as protective cultures and plant-based antimicrobials, are well studied and proposed as feasible alternative strategies, and their industrial use must be encouraged.

Food industry needs alternative strategies to synthetic antimicrobials for controlling both spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms. Many natural and eco-friendly strategies for food preservation have been proposed in last years. Nonetheless, only limited data are available about the usefulness of most of them under industrial-scale conditions, which needs proper attention to satisfy the requirements of the industry as well as the demand of the consumers.

Consequently, studies for the ability of the reported biopreservative agents to control unwanted microorganisms when applied at the industrial scale are greatly required. At this level, data about their function as antimicrobials, their mechanism of action, their effect on the usual sensorial characteristics, their safety to be used as food additives and their additional role as starter and/or probiotic microorganisms are needed.

In this Research Topic, our objective is to gather all the information, both research papers and reviews, in the field of Food Biopreservation within the industrial context. Special attention should be paid to studies based on emerging biopreservation approaches applied at the pilot or industrial scales. They will contribute to the current knowledge about the feasibility of biopreservative agents under industrial-scale food manufacturing conditions. Works developed to evaluate the mechanisms of action involved in the biopreservative role as well as their effects on the food safety and quality are strongly encouraged.

Therefore, the topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:
-emerging and low environmental impact strategies to control pathogenic and spoilage in food at industrial level,
-advances in identifying and controlling the implantation of protective cultures under industrial manufacturing conditions,
-advances in analyzing the mechanisms involved in the activity of biopreservative agents in food: genomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches,
-the potential toxicological and side effects of the biopreservative agents,
-the potential impact of biopreservative agents on the quality and safety of food, considering the holistic view of interaction with other microorganisms;
-optimization of the biopreservative agent application procedures in the food industry,
-development of procedures for food safety prediction when applying biopreservative agents.

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Frontiers in Microbiology

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