Application of bacteriocins in vegetable food biopreservation

Bacteriocins are generally recognized as "natural" compounds able to influence the safety and quality of foods. In the past years, a lot of works have been aimed to the detection, purification and characterisation of bacteriocins, as well as to their use in food preservation strategies. A list of review articles dealing with the application of bacteriocins to the protection of foods of animal origin is also available in literature, but it lacks for a summary on the utilization of bacteriocins in vegetable foods. These biopreservatives can be used in a number of ways in food systems and this paper mainly focuses on the state-of-the-art application of bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to promote the microbial stability of both fermented and non-fermented vegetable food products using bacteriocinogenic strains as starter cultures, protective cultures or co-cultures and the employment of pure bacteriocins as food additives. In addition, applications of bacteriocins from non-LAB are also reviewed. The scopes of future directions of research are summarised. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.