Food Microbiology

Food Microbiology publishes original research articles, short research communications, opinions, and review papers on all aspects of the microbiology of foods and food environments, including safety, shelf-life, diagnostics, ecology, and sensory attributes. The Journal aims to advance the microbiology of foods by discoveries, increasing knowledge, research tools, and concepts. The global audience includes academia, government, industry, and competent authorities.

The journal considers articles dealing with the application, association, or prevention of viruses, bacteria, yeast, and molds related to foods or food environments through physical, biological, chemical, diagnostics, application of omics, or training/education. The application of advanced tools such as artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and omics is encouraged.

The following categories and examples that are within the scope of Food Microbiology:

Food processing: Papers that report on intervention methods (physical, biological or chemical) related to inactivation and control of microbes will be considered. The articles should demonstrate optimization (validation) and verification with relevant microbes for the food matrix being reported. The use of protective cultures, microbial metabolites, and bacteriophages, amongst others, will be considered provided efficacy is demonstrated within food systems. Studies relating to natural antimicrobials (for example, bacteriocins, phenolic compounds, or essential oils) can be included, although these should be chemically characterized and novel without simply confirming previous findings.

Food fermentations: The ecology, performance, and functionality of fermented foods would be within the journal's scope provided the reported study can be replicated and results applied to define, improve, or contribute to the body of knowledge. Using omics to characterize, correlate, and/or identify populations or to study community assembly in fermented foods is encouraged. Findings of omics are preferably verified and not solely based on sequencing, metabolic profiles, and correlation software. Probiotic studies will be within scope but only if these relate to the interaction of stability within a food system rather than the gastrointestinal tract or effects on the immune system.

Food processing environments: The prevalence of pathogens or spoilage microbes within the processing environment can be considered if linked to a production practice or process. The control of biofilms by bacterial strains or communities is within scope if evidence of biofilm formation within a simulated commercial environment exists. Biofilms formed on surfaces not encountered within food processing environments, such as microtiter plates, will not be considered.

Pre-harvest microbiology of foods: Aspects of microbiology, ecology, and control of microbes encountered in animal or plant production that impact food safety and/or shelf-life are considered.

Survey and prevalence studies: The prevalence of pathogens, including antimicrobial resistance, would be considered within the journal if sampled over a reasonable time period and geographical region and linked to a practice or procedure (for example, administration of antibiotics, cage-free production, amongst others).

Risk assessment and predictive microbiology: Studies reporting on risk assessment or predictive microbiology, including the application of artificial intelligence, are within the journal's scope provided they relate to the activity of microbes within a food or processing environment.

Microbiology diagnostics: Diagnostics, including biosensors, for detecting microbes are within scope provided they are tested using a sufficient spectrum of strains to assess selectivity and sensitivity. Detection of targets with relevant food systems should also be demonstrated.

Food safety education and training tools: Training or teaching approaches and training tools can be considered, provided the learning approaches, methodological framework, delivery methods, and success metrics are provided.

Fundamental research on the physiology, genetics, and/or transcriptome of food-derived isolates: Research that reports on the mechanisms of virulence, physiology, or regulation of microbes isolated from foods but not necessarily within a food system.

Out of scope

The following areas are out of scope for Food Microbiology:

• Microbiology that resides outside the food or food processing environments. Exceptions are fundamental genetics/physiology of food isolates in relation to virulence, stress resistance or food fermentation.

• Observations, non-hypothesis, driven research or studies that confirm previous published works.

• Preliminary studies that only report observations.

• Research supporting health claims of pre- or probiotics.

• Prevalence studies or surveys that don’t report on practices, process or cause of the observations.

• Control of phytopathogens.

• Drugs or treatments administered to animals, unless there is an impact on the carriage of human pathogens through to the final product.

• Fermentation studies that do not verify through culturing, sequence and sensory metabolite attribution.

• Biosensors and microbiology methods that do not demonstrate the performance of detecting relevant microbiological targets in real food systems.

• Confirmation of diagnostics or those detecting chemical or physical adulterants.