Advances in Thermal & Non-Thermal Food Preservation

The fields of food microbiology and food process engineering encompass a wide variety of microorganisms including spoilage, probiotic, fermentative, and pathogenic bacteria, molds, yeasts, viruses, and parasites, by employing different inactivation techniques. While several texts address different aspects of food microbiology, until now no single book has covered all microbial inactivation processes with emphasis on emerging trends in food preservation techniques. "Advances in Thermal and Non-Thermal Food Preservation" provides current, definitive and factual material written by experts on different thermal and non-thermal food preservation technologies. Written at a level that presupposes a general background in microbiology and food engineering needed to understand the basic mechanisms of microbial inactivation, the book's chapters cover thermal food preservation techniques (e.g., retorting, aseptic processing, ohmic heating, microwave and radio-wave frequency heating, induction heating), minimal processing (e.g., sous-vide packaging), and non-thermal food preservation techniques (e.g., high pressure processing and pulsed technologies). Editors Tewari and Juneja give special emphasis to the commercial aspects of non-conventional food preservation techniques. While the unique feature of this proposed book is its thorough coverage of the various treatments that inactivate microorganisms, the material in each chapter is arranged in a logical, systematic and concise sequence. Tables, figures, and data are utilized for better understanding of concepts. At the end of each chapter, citations are included from the scientific literature by experts in that particular field of microbial inactivation methodology. As the most comprehensive and contemporary resource of its kind, "Advances in Thermal and Non-Thermal Food Preservation" is the definitive standard in describing the inactivation of microorganisms through conventional and newer, more novel techniques and their combinations.