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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Application of bacteriocins in vegetable food biopreservation.

subject

description

Bacteriocins are generally recognized as "natural" compounds able to influence the safety and quality of foods. In the past years, a lot of works have been aimed to the detection, purification and characterisation of bacteriocins, as well as to their use in food preservation strategies. A list of review articles dealing with the application of bacteriocins to the protection of foods of animal origin is also available in literature, but it lacks for a summary on the utilization of bacteriocins in vegetable foods. These biopreservatives can be used in a number of ways in food systems and this paper mainly focuses on the state-of-the-art application of bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to promote the microbial stability of both fermented and non-fermented vegetable food products using bacteriocinogenic strains as starter cultures, protective cultures or co-cultures and the employment of pure bacteriocins as food additives. In addition, applications of bacteriocins from non-LAB are also reviewed. The scopes of future directions of research are summarised.