Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Food Microbiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfoodmicro Investigating the infuence of organic acid marinades, storage temperature and time on the survival/inactivation interface of Salmonella on chicken breast fllets Anastasia E. Lytou a , Konstantinos Tzortzinis a , Panagiotis N. Skandamis b , George-John E. Nychas a, ⁎ , Efstathios Z. Panagou a a Laboratory of Microbiology and Biotechnology of Foods, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Faculty of Foods, Biotechnology and Development, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Iera Odos 75, Athens 11855, Greece b Laboratory of Food Quality Control & Hygiene, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Faculty of Foods, Biotechnology and Development, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Iera Odos 75, Athens 11855, Greece ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Inactivation probability Acidic marination Serotype persistence Poultry meat Pathogenic bacteria ABSTRACT The aim of this work was to study the infuence of lemon and vinegar marinades on Salmonella inoculated on chicken fllets and stored under diferent storage temperatures for nine days in the presence of indigenous microbiota. In addition to this, model development for the determination of the inactivation boundaries and the prediction of pathogens response was attempted. The diferent acid concentrations in the marinades, the type of acid, the storage temperature as well as the duration of storage impacted the levels of pathogens and background fora. The higher tested concentrations (2% and 4% v/v for acetic and citric acid) were more efective against Salmonella and spoilage microorganisms than the lower ones (0.5 and 1% v/v for acetic and citric acid), while the intermediate concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2, 3% v/v for acetic and citric acid, respectively) presented dif- ferentiations of particular interest to the microbial responses to acidic stress. The aforementioned parameters also diferentiated Salmonella serovars persistence and spoilage microorganisms dominance. Regarding model development, the probability of inactivation of Salmonella was satisfactorily predicted particularly in the case of acetic acid marination while in model validation, the majority of the vinegar marinated samples were correctly classifed, whereas, in case of lemon marination, a higher number of misclassifcations was observed, indicating a partial weakness of the model to predict the pathogens response at interface concentrations. 1. Introduction Salmonella is recognized as one of the most prevalent foodborne pathogens linked to several outbreaks. In 2016, a number of 94,530 confrmed salmonellosis cases were reported by the European Union. Although infections caused by Salmonella have been declining since 2008, in recent years (2012–2016) this decreasing trend has been sta- bilized. Specifcally in 2016, the number of reported cases has been slightly increased according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) (EFSA, 2017). The most widespread serovar of the pathogen is Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica ser. Enteritidis or Sal- monella Enteritidis in short (Brenner et al., 2000) followed by Salmo- nella Typhimurium, Salmonella Infantis and Salmonella Derby (EFSA, 2017). Among the products with the highest level of non-compliance with Salmonella food safety criteria are ready-to-cook poultry meat preparations, including marinated chicken products (EFSA, 2017). Marination is a food preparation process that could contribute to the mitigation of this issue by using marinades containing ingredients with antimicrobial activity. Previous studies have reported the efectiveness of several marinades that contained wine, soy sauce, essential oils or spices mixtures on decreasing either pathogen population such as Salmonella (Rhoades et al., 2013; Pathania et al., 2010; Nisiotou et al., 2013) and Campylobacter (Isohanni et al., 2010; Zakarienė et al., 2015) or extending the shelf life (Kargiotou et al., 2011; Karam et al., 2019). Marinade formulations containing organic acids could also have a sig- nifcant impact on growth, inhibition or even inactivation of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms of meat, while at the same time bal- ancing the odor and favor due to the presence of a variety of other ingredients, resulting in desirable fnal products (Birk et al., 2010; Yang https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2019.03.019 Received 30 September 2018; Received in revised form 8 February 2019; Accepted 29 March 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: gjn@aua.gr (G.-J.E. Nychas). International Journal of Food Microbiology 299 (2019) 47–57 Available online 01 April 2019 0168-1605/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T