B01012: Dynamic database on microbial responses to common stresses in the food chain
Wednesday 17 March 2004
This research project aimed to increase the size of the Food MicroModel database, to put the data in the same format and accept other data to form Microbase.
Background
Data on foodborne pathogenic bacterial responses to stresses in the food chain existed as the basis for Food MicroModel, a software package which predicts how bacteria might grow or survive in foods under different conditions. The aim of the project was to put all this data in the same format.
A large number of experiments have been carried out over many years to determine the response of foodborne pathogenic bacteria to stresses applied to food. A former Government research programme funded many of these and the outcomes formed the database Microbase (formally Food MicroModel). The aims of this project were to increase the size of the database, reformat data from the literature and accept data from other national centres.
Microbase contains about 20,000 records, which would aid the Agency in advising on quantitative microbial risk assessment questions and help decrease the incidence of foodborne illness. Overall this research will contribute to the Agency's key priority of reducing foodborne illnesses by 20% in a five-year period.
Research Approach
Microbase currently consist of 20,000 records, of which 10,000 are part of the Food MicroModel database (of which 7000-8000 were produced before 1994), 7,000 are from the literature and 3,000 are records from other sources (mainly from the University of Complutense Madrid and the Institute of Food Research).
Large portions of the literature data will be transferred and reformatted from the output of earlier projects that aimed at the validation of the predictive models in the Food MicroModel software. The objective will be to enter records in Microbase by direct input from the scientific literature on pathogenic bacteria and then data on the growth of spoilage organisms.
Results and findings
The project result was Microbase, a PC based relational database with a user-friendly browser which enables fast and efficient interrogation of the data. There is also the facility to carry out predictions and compare these with the raw data and download selected data to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
The project attracted interest from many countries and led to the development of a freely available international database, called Combase, based on the same structure as Microbase. Combase was launched on the internet in June 2003 (http://wyndmoor.arserrc.gov/combase/ or http://www.ifr.ac.uk/combase) and was the product of collaboration between the Food Standards Agency, the US Department of Agriculture and the Institute of Food Research. It is a valuable tool for anyone interested in the microbial safety and quality of food. In the future a new set of predictive models will be developed which will produce predictions based on all the data on the site.