Abstract

A microbial growth model with three interpretable parameters was introduced in this study. This model, which was only applicable up to the early stationary phase of the microbial growth, was used to describe the published isothermal growth curves ofListeria monocytogenes in milk at 1.5 - 16°C and temperature dependence of its parameters was fitted by ad hoc empirical secondary models. Published isothermal growth curves of Pseudomonas spp. in poultry at 2 - 20°C were also fitted with this model but in this case one of the parameters in this model was fixed to reduce the number of parameters. This reduced model produced almost the same goodness-of-fit as the full model. Although more studies should be carried out to evaluate the applicability of the proposed model under dynamic temperature conditions, this study has shown that microbial growth data -up to early stationary phase- could be successfully described by this model.

Key words: Growth curves, Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas spp., mathematical models, predictive microbiology.