New Trends in Table Olive Fermentation

Table olives are a traditional fermented vegetable with many centuries of history, particularly in the Mediterranean basin, where this food has had a great influence on the culture and diet of many countries. Moreover this fermented food is prepared with fruits obtained from cultivated Olea eoropaea subsp. europaea var. europea trees and has been expanded for many countries all over the world. At present, the table olive is one of the major fermented vegetables, with an overall production above 2,500,000 tons/year.

Thus the table olive industry is increasingly demanding new biotechnological approaches, sensory characteristics and differentiation of the products. So scientists have to focus on solving problems and provide new tools in this fermented food process.
In recent years, there is an increased interest on different nutritional and microbial aspects related to table olives. During the last five years, new fields has been implemented or developed, such us new probiotic strains to produce an enriched product, study of pathogen survival, NaCl content reduction, microbial resistant to stress conditions, microbial biofilms, predictive microbiology, use of NGS and metagenomics, evolution of pigments and use of bioactive compounds derived from table olive processing.

We welcome authors around the world to contribute high quality original research articles as well as review articles in this Research Topic to improve the whole table olive fermentation process. The main goal is to demonstrate the important role of this fermented food in the world and its future impact as one of the main fermented food.