Quantitative Methods for Food Safety and Quality in the Vegetable Industry

Abstract

Food industry is a sector that still needs to make important advances in the application of quantitative and mathematical tools to optimize food processes and improve productivity. This book is intended to provide a quantitative basis on the most important aspects concerning safety and quality in the vegetable sector. To this end, the most relevant aspects will be described for the different topics, which will be treated from a quantitative perspective, deepening into the mathematical concepts in specific chapters. The book introduces the food safety challenges in the vegetable industry from primary production to consumption. Hereafter, existing and innovative quantitative methods that could be applied in the vegetable industry for food safety and quality and how they can be applied for risk assessment are described. Also, the work introduces readers to new preservation and packaging methods, rapid analytical methods for quality determination based on chemometrics applications, and quantitative methods that could be implemented for microbial and toxicological risk assessment in vegetable products. The work highlights the importance of quality aspects in vegetable-based products (i.e., salads), describing the main mechanisms involved in microbial and physical-chemical deterioration of these products and how they can be described mathematically. Finally, risk assessment tools such as predictive microbiology software tools and the food safety objective concept are presented and case studies are provided on their application in Risk Management Systems. With this content, this work makes an attempt to endorse the use of quantitative methods for optimization of food processes in the vegetable industry.