Catherine Joly

Nisin as a Food Preservative: Part 1: Physicochemical Properties, Antimicrobial Activity, and Main Uses

Nisin is a natural preservative for many food products. This bacteriocin is mainly used in dairy and meat products. Nisin inhibits pathogenic food borne bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes and many other Gram-positive food spoilage microorganisms. Nisin can be used alone or in combination with other preservatives or also with several physical treatments. This paper reviews physicochemical and biological properties of nisin, the main factors affecting its antimicrobial effectiveness, and its food applications as an additive directly incorporated into food matrices.

Influence of photocrosslinking on the retrogradation of wheat starch based films

The ageing of wheat starch based materials was followed as a function of time for different systems suitably hydrated to be in the rubbery state. In particular, one aspect of retrogradation, that is to say the development of crystallinity is analysed in order to study the influence of a specific crosslinking treatment of starch films made by UV irradiation (photocrosslinking). Mechanical and thermal properties showed that an important limitation on this particular ageing occurs after photocrosslinking at room temperature. A process of accelerated ageing, monitored by modulated DSC, was also performed at 60 °C in order to increase retrogradation kinetics. The results showed a recrystallisation decrease and it appeared that the presence of the plasticiser enhances retrogradation. For a plasticised sample (17% glycerol), a decrease of 30% of the melting enthalpy was observed compared to 91% for an unplasticised one. A modification in the nature of the melting peaks, as recorded by modulated DSC, allowed us to propose a model for amylopectin retrogradation after crosslinking.

Active packaging with antifungal activities.

There have been many reviews concerned with antimicrobial food packaging, and with the use of antifungal compounds, but none provided an exhaustive picture of the applications of active packaging to control fungal spoilage. Very recently, many studies have been done in these fields, therefore it is timely to review this topic. This article examines the effects of essential oils, preservatives, natural products, chemical fungicides, nanoparticles coated to different films, and chitosan in vitro on the growth of moulds, but also in vivo on the mould free shelf-life of bread, cheese, and fresh fruits and vegetables. A short section is also dedicated to yeasts. All the applications are described from a microbiological point of view, and these were sorted depending on the name of the species. Methods and results obtained are discussed. Essential oils and preservatives were ranked by increased efficacy on mould growth. For all the tested molecules, Penicillium species were shown more sensitive than Aspergillus species. However, comparison between the results was difficult because it appeared that the efficiency of active packaging depended greatly on the environmental factors of food such as water activity, pH, temperature, NaCl concentration, the nature, the size, and the mode of application of the films, in addition to the fact that the amount of released antifungal compounds was not constant with time.

Nisin as a Food Preservative: Part 2: Antimicrobial Polymer Materials Containing Nisin

Nisin is the only bacteriocin approved as a food preservative because of its antibacterial effectiveness and its negligible toxicity for humans. Typical problems encountered when nisin is directly added to foods are mainly fat adsorption leading to activity loss, heterogeneous distribution in the food matrix, inactivation by proteolytic enzymes, and emergence of resistance in normally sensitive bacteria strains. To overcome these problems, nisin can be immobilized in solid matrices that must act as diffusional barriers and allow controlling its release rate. This strategy allows maintaining a just sufficient nisin concentration at the food surface. The design of such antimicrobial materials must consider both bacterial growth kinetics but also nisin release kinetics. In this review, nisin incorporation in polymer-based materials will be discussed and special emphasis will be on the applications and properties of antimicrobial food packaging containing this bacteriocin.

Polybutylene succinate adipate/starch blends: A morphological study for the design of controlled release films

Films made of plasticized starch (PLS)/poly(butylene succinate co-butylene adipate) (PBSA) blends were prepared by thermomechanical processing varying the PBSA proportions in blends to obtain biphasic materials with distinct morphologies. These morphologies were characterized by selective extraction of each phase, microscopic observations, and selective water/oxygen permeation properties. These experiments allowed identifying the blend compositions corresponding to the beginning of partial continuity (cluster partial percolation) until total continuity of each phases. This property was related to the controlled release of model molecule (fluorescein) previously dispersed in the PLS and revealed that its release depended on the tortuosity of the PLS phase tailored by the polymer blends composition and by the limited swelling of the PLS when entrapped in the PBSA phase. Future applications will focus on food preservatives dispersed in PBSA-PLS blends to obtain active antimicrobial packaging put in direct contact with intermediate to high moisture foods.

Specific enzymatic tailoring of wheat arabinoxylan reveals the role of substitution on xylan film properties.

To increase understanding of the applicability of agro biomass by-products as biodegradable film formers, the effect of wheat arabinoxylan (WAX) fine structure on film properties was studied by applying specific enzyme modifications. WAX was selectively modified to mimic the natural variations of different arabinoxylans, particularly the degree of mono and disubstitution of α-L-arabinofuranosyl (Araf) units in β-D-xylopyranosyl (Xylp) backbone residues. The resulting modified WAX samples had similar arabinose-to-xylose (Ara/Xyl) ratios, but they differed in the number of unsubstituted Xylp units. The substitution of WAX was found to affect, in particular, tensile strength, crystallinity, and oxygen permeability properties of the films, as statistically significant decreases in tensile strength and oxygen permeability took place after WAX de-branching. An increase in the number of unsubstituted Xylp units decreased the temperature of relaxation of small-scale molecular motions of WAX (β-relaxation) and increased the degree of crystallinity of the films.

Proposal of a set of model polymer additives designed for confocal FRAP diffusion experiments.

The migration of additives from food packaging to food stuffs is kinetically governed by the diffusion coefficient (D) of the additive within the polymer. Food safety authorities have recently allowed the use of mathematical models to predict D, with the additive molecular weight as a single entry parameter. Such models require experimental values to feed the databases, but these values are often scattered. To deal with this issue, a fluorescent chemically homologous series of model additives was synthesized with molecular weights (MW) ranging from 236 g.mol (-1) to 1120 g.mol (-1). This set was then used to collect diffusion coefficients D through confocal fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). This microscopic technique allows in situ packaging micro migration tests. The FRAP method was tested against results from the literature before being applied to two different model polystyrenes in a preliminary study to investigate the relationship D = f(MW). Our intermediate objective was to compare various experimental D = f(MW) from our method with predictions from other mathematical or semiempirical models.

Influence of some formulation and process parameters on the stability of lysozyme incorporated in corn flour- or corn starch-based extruded materials prepared by melt blending processing.

In order to obtain an antimicrobial biodegradable material, corn flour was extruded with 1% of lysozyme. Since the limited stability of natural preservatives such as lysozyme is a common bottleneck to the elaboration of active biomaterials by melt blending processes, the influence of formulation and of extrusion processing temperature on its residual enzymatic activity was investigated. To assess the contribution of process parameters such as temperature, shear stress and of related formulation parameters such as glycerol and moisture contents, the stability of lysozyme following its extrusion or its thermoforming with plasticized corn starch or thermal treatments in aqueous glycerol solutions was also studied. Increasing glycerol content from 25% to 30% significantly limited inactivation of lysozyme during extrusion, while increasing initial moisture content of the mixture from 14.5% to 28.5% had the opposite effect. These observations open the possibility to prepare active materials retaining more than 60±7% of initial lysozyme activity.