High-throughput screening for new product concepts

Validate microbial growth or inactivation in real products

Ingredients, (bio)preservatives, processing and storage conditions all have an impact on the microbial safety and stability of your new product concept. Furthermore, using novel ingredients or going ‘clean label’ (i.e. reduced preservatives, salt, sugar, etc.) can open the door to new microbial contaminants or less robust food products, which may perform in unexpected ways.

In the design of your formulation and processing, you want to be sure you optimise inactivation and minimise microbial growth rates, in case microbes survive or contaminate the product after processing. You also need to understand the limits beyond which your product moves from the ‘safe zone’ to the ‘danger zone’, whether in quality, spoilage or presence of contaminants that cause foodborne illness.

Testing thousands of scenarios, from ‘best’ to ‘worst’ case

NIZO’s high-throughput screening assays allow us to test a very large number of components in parallel, in real food products, quickly and more cost effectively. We have developed a high-throughput platform that screens thousands of different formulations and conditions simultaneously, and over time.

For example, we can test ‘worst case’ scenarios with different pH levels, temperatures, times, and more, to see how your product performs. We can test different biopreservation systems. And we can validate the growth and inactivation of individual pathogenic and spoiler bacteria and spore formers, including Listeria, Salmonella, Bacillus cereus, and more.

Then, we can provide you with advice for product formulation solutions and process improvements, to enable you to make informed decisions for the further development of your new and robust product concept.

NIZO can:

• Screen drinks, cheese, plant-based dairy alternatives and more
• Evaluate the impact of biopreservatives, bioprotective cultures and botanical extracts
• Apply our own NIZO culture collection that includes pathogenic, spoiler and bioprotective bacterial strains
• Measure the impact of multiple conditions over time: including pH, temperature, use of biopreservatives, and more