Prospects for improved control of dairy-relevant sporeformers using -omics technologies

Bacterial sporeformers encountered in raw milk and dairy products include species that can cause spoilage or foodborne illness. Large diversity exists with respect to the ability of their spores to survive heat inactivation treatments and of their vegetative cells to grow in finished products. Enumeration of spores is often complicated by their low numbers and, in addition, routine testing methods often do not discriminate between harmless strains and strains that pose a threat to quality and/or safety. Source identification and adequate, harmonised detection of spores/sporeformers, and assessment of their outgrowth potential in dairy products is very important to ensure dairy safety and quality. Here, we explore the added value of advances in next generation sequencing technologies to improve detection and enumeration of sporeformers, predict their functionalities in order to identify their Achilles heel, and to better understand their behavior in different niches in the dairy chain, ultimately to improve control of this important group of microbes.