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Log reduction is a measure of how thoroughly a decontamination process reduces the concentration of a contaminant.It is defined as the common logarithm of the ratio of the levels of contamination before and after the process, so an increment of 1 corresponds to a reduction in concentration by a factor of 10.
Z-value is a term used in microbial thermal death time calculations. It is the number of degrees the temperature has to be increased to achieve a tenfold (i.e. 1 log 10) reduction in the D-value. The D-value of an organism is the time required in a given medium, at a given temperature, for a ten-fold reduction in the number of organisms.
In microbiology, in the context of a sterilization procedure, the D-value or decimal reduction time (or decimal reduction dose) is the time (or dose of an antimicrobial drug) required, at a given condition (e.g. temperature) or set of conditions, to achieve a one-log reduction, that is, to kill 90% of relevant microorganisms. [1]
This is usually done by thermal processing and finding ways to reduce the number of bacteria in the product. Time-temperature measurements of bacterial reduction is determined by a D-value, meaning how long it would take to reduce the bacterial population by 90% or one log 10 at a given temperature.
(A log 10 reduction between 6 and 7 means that 1 bacterium out of 1 million (10 6) to 10 million (10 7) bacteria survive the treatment.) The Codex Alimentarius Code of Hygienic Practice for Milk notes that milk pasteurization is designed to achieve at least a 5 log 10 reduction of Coxiella burnetii . [ 48 ]
In autecological studies, the growth of bacteria (or other microorganisms, as protozoa, microalgae or yeasts) in batch culture can be modeled with four different phases: lag phase (A), log phase or exponential phase (B), stationary phase (C), and death phase (D). [3] During lag phase, bacteria adapt themselves to growth conditions.
Specialist companies will often advertise a certain log reduction, e.g., 6-log reduction or 99.9999% effective, instead of sterilization. This takes into consideration a phenomenon known as light and dark repair ( photoreactivation and base excision repair , respectively), in which a cell can repair DNA that has been damaged by UV light.
The water in food has a tendency to evaporate, but the water vapor in the surrounding air has a tendency to condense into the food. When the two tendencies are in balance— and the air and food are stable—the air's relative humidity (expressed as a fraction instead of as a percentage) is taken to be the water activity, a w. Thus, water ...