v Food is the essential source of nutrients (such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals) for all living organisms to sustain life. A large part of daily human efforts is concentrated on food production, processing, packaging and marketing, product development, preservation, storage, and ensuring food safety and quality. It is obvious therefore, our food supply chain can contain microorganisms that interact with the food, thereby interfering in the ecology of food substrates. The microbe-food interaction can be mostly beneficial (as in the case of many fermented foods such as cheese, buer, sausage, etc.) or in some cases, it is detrimental (spoilage of food, mycotoxin, etc.). The Food Biology series aims at bringing all these aspects of microbe-food interactions in form of topical volumes, covering food microbiology, food mycology, biochemistry, microbial ecology, food biotechnology and bio-processing, new food product developments with microbial interventions, food nutrification with nutraceuticals, food authenticity, food origin traceability, and food science and technology. Special emphasis is laid on new molecular techniques relevant to food biology research or to monitoring and assessing food safety and quality, multiple hurdle food preservation techniques, as well as new interventions in biotechnological applications in food processing and development. The series is broadly broken up into food fermentation, food safety and hygiene, food authenticity and traceability, microbial interventions in food bio-processing and food additive development, sensory science, molecular diagnostic methods in detecting food borne pathogens and food policy, etc. Leading international authorities with background in academia, research, industry and government have been drawn into the series either as authors or as editors. The series will be a useful reference resource base in food microbiology, biotechnology, food science and technology for reserchers, teachers, students and food science and technology practitioners. Ramesh C. Ray Series Editor Preface to the Series