Bacterial spores can cause food spoilage and food-borne diseases. However, due to their high resistance to stress, the inactivation of spores has been a pressing issue in the food industry. The presence of bacterial spores in food increases the risk of foodborne illness. Compared with the bacterial vegetative body, its stress resistance is very strong, which is mainly related to its spore structure. The spore formation is affected by many factors, mainly due to the regulation of various genes in vegetative cells.

“Sprout first and inactivate later” is a traditional idea of inactivating spores. However, due to the strong resistance of spores, it is difficult to inactivate them directly in the sterilization process, especially to the mild sterilization methods. Heat sterilization is a simple and effective sterilization method, but it can negatively impact the quality and nutrition of food products. As an emerging non-thermal sterilization technology, Cold plasma (CP) has shown great potential in food sterilization, but this still requires more research and attention. Therefore, we provide such an opportunity to welcome researchers in the fields of food microbiology to discuss the research on the inactivation of food spores by cold plasma.

CP treatment has been studied in the food industry and has huge potential development prospects in recent years. The research on the plasma sterilization mechanism generally agrees that the active substances produced by the plasma during the ionization process lead to the death of the bacteria. The lethal effects of reactive species can be roughly divided into UV radiation damage, free radical lethal damage, and charged particle damage. Therefore, CP shows great application potential in spore inactivation. The goal of this Research topic is to solve the following questions: (1) What is the formation and germination mechanism of bacterial spores? (2) How CP acts on food sterilization and its sterilization mechanism? (3) What about the possibility of applying CP in bacterial spore inactivation.

We welcome Original Research and Review articles on the topics including, but not limited the following:

• Cold plasma used as a potential method for inactivating spores, and investigating the inactivation mechanism.

• The inactivation conditions of cold plasma for different types of spores from various food sources.

• Novel bacterial spore germination factors or new combinations of existing germination factors.

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Frontiers in Microbiology

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