Determination of microbial load for different beverages and foodstuff by assessment of intracellular ATP

• Food industries require rapid microbiological methods.
• Traditional microbiological analysis of food and beverages are slow.
• Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) assay is a fast and sensitive alternative.
• Applications of ATP assay to many branches of the food industry are presented.

Traditional detection methods available for microbial analysis of food are time consuming and not sufficiently sensitive to meet food industries requirements as rapidity, on-site applicability, and cost-effectiveness. Among the more recent rapid methods for detection of microorganisms in food, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence is very suitable for on-line monitoring of bacterial contamination in food and beverages due to no need for a culturing step or large equipment to fulfill the measurement, rapidity and sensitivity. The availability of sensitive luminometers as well as many commercial ATP-bioluminescent kits allowed the development of various applications in industrial microbiology for rapid in situ determinations. This review summarizes the scientific literature available to date on the use of microbial ATP to determine the microbial load for different beverages and/or foodstuff.