Spoilage by Alicyclobacillus Bacteria in Juice and Beverage Products: Chemical, Physical, and Combined Control Methods

Abstract

Alicyclobacillus is a genus of spoilage bacteria causing contamination of juices and other beverage products that cannot easily be contaminated by other microbes because of their high acid contents. During the last 4 decades since the first species of Alicyclobacillus was isolated in 1967, Alicyclobacillus has become a major concern to the global juice and beverage industries, and many promising methods have been developed and applied to control them. After introducing the history and general characteristics of Alicyclobacillus, as well as their heat resistance and spoilage, this review focuses on the control methods against Alicyclobacillus, including chemical and physical methods and combined methods. All these control methods show inhibitory or killing effects against Alicyclobacillus to some extent and, moreover, some of them have been put to use in the juice and beverage industries for decades and shown to be quite effective, although further developments can be achieved and new methods are constantly being established and investigated. Although it is difficult to compare the effects with one another among these methods because of the different experimental conditions in different reports, some of them, such as the treatments of nisin and high hydrostatic pressure, are well studied and proved to have extensive application prospect. The inhibitory factors, test strains and media, and especially the detailed experimental conditions and main results of these control methods are summarized here. The limitations of some methods mainly relating to the changes of products' sensory qualities are also presented.Keywords: alicyclobacillus, contaminants, food safety Historical Perspective of AlicyclobacillusJuice and beverage products are not easily contaminated by microbes due to their low pH (usually <5.0, in some products even <4.0), but there are still several kinds of microbes that can survive this acid environment and cause spoilage, including some aerobes such as Bacillus coagulans and Bacillus megaterium (causing flatsour type spoilage), some anaerobic spore-forming bacteria such as Clostridium butyricum and Clostridium pasteurianum (producing gas and butyric odors) (Silva and Gibbs 2004), some lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus brevis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides (causing vinegary, buttermilk off-odors) and some heat-resistant mycelial fungi such as Byssochlamys nivea and Talaromyces flavus (Steyn and others 2011). Nevertheless, a large-scale apple juice spoilage incident in 1982 in Germany made people realize that besides the microbes mentioned above, a new type of aerobic spore-forming bacterium can also spoil juice and beverage products (flat-sour spoilage and generating medicinal, antiseptic offensive off-odor). It can survive the commercially applied pasteurization procedures (88 to 96°C for about 2 min, or 90 to 95°C for about 30 to 60 s) and germinate in an acid environment. It has now become a new MS 20131890 Submitted 19/12/2013, Accepted 15/3/2014 threat to juice and beverage proc...

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Antibacterial activity and mechanism of cinnamic acid and chlorogenic acid against Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris vegetative cells in apple juice

“…The characteristic of the spoilage is the formation of a distinct antiseptic or medicinal off‐odour caused by guaiacol and the halophenols, including 2, 6‐dichlorophenol and 2, 6‐dibromophenol, and guaiacol is the mainly metabolite, which can be detected at a level of 2 μg L −1 by sensory means in fruit juices (Wang et al ., ; Cai et al ., ). It has been reported that Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris had been isolated from various fruit juices, such as apple, kiwi, pear, grapefruit, lemon, orange, pear, passion, mango and so on, with apple is the most frequent isolation sources (Cai et al ., 2015a; Tianli et al ., ). Therefore, A. acidoterrestris have been always a major issue in the fruit juice industry and effective control methods are needed to minimise the risk of Alicyclobacillus ‐related spoilage.…”