Review of Secondary Mathematical Models of Predictive Microbiology.

Predictive microbiology has been developed utilizing accurate and versatile mathematical models to predict microbial behavior during food processing instead of using traditional microbiological methods. Generally, mathematical models are classified into three types: primary, secondary, and tertiary models. Secondary model deals with the response of parameters appearing in primary modeling approaches as functions of one or more environmental conditions like temperature, pH, etc. Most of them have little or no microbiological basis, which makes interpretation of some model parameters difficult and sometimes their performance is not stable. This paper reviews the performance and development of secondary models and discusses their strengths and weaknesses, which may help future model development and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]