Inactivation of wine-associated microbiota by continuous pulsed electric field treatments

Four different treatments of pulsed electric field (PEF) technology were tested in a continuous-flow system for inactivating 25 species of yeast, lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria associated with wines. Overall, the reached inactivation varied from 0.64 to 4.94 log units. Curiously, it was determined that the application of higher specific energy did not provide significant declination of yeast population, although significantly different inactivations were determined for bacteria. The inactivation of bacteria highly depended on each species and results corroborated different sensitivity of two Oenococcus oeni strains what could be related with their genetic characteristics.