Bioprotective cultures and bacteriocins as food preservatives

Abstract

Food preservation technologies face the challenge of extending product shelf lifeapplying different factors to prevent the microbiological spoilage of food and inhibit/inactivate food borne pathogens maintaining or even enhancing its quality. One suchpreservation strategy is the application of bacteriocins or bacteriocin-producer cultures as a kind of food biopreservation. Bacteriocins are ribosomally synthesized smallpolypeptide molecules that exert antagonistic activity against closely related andunrelated bacteria without harming the producing strain by specific immunity proteins. This chapter aims to contribute to current knowledge about innovative naturalpreservative agents and their application in the food industry. Specifically, its purposeis to analyze the classification of bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria (LAB), desirablecharacteristics of bacteriocins that position them in a privileged place in food biopreservation technology, their success story as well as the bacteriocinogenic LAB invarious food systems. Finally, challenges and barrier strategies used to enhance theefficiency of the bacteriocins antimicrobial effect are presented in this chapter.