FISHing for Food Microorganisms

FISH has the potential to make the visualization of microorganisms in food matrices possible and to allow for the enumeration, location, and distribution of positive, spoilage, and pathogenic microorganisms via nondestructive methods. Innovative techniques and methodical improvements have boosted the potential of FISH to study food microorganisms. The better understanding of the functioning of microbial communities is a challenging and crucial issue in the field of food microbiology, as it constitutes a prerequisite to the optimization of positive and technological microbial population functioning, as well as for the better control of pathogen contamination of food. As it enables the detection of most bacteria, even in samples where the proportion of cultivable bacteria among the total microbial population is relatively low, FISH has been applied for the specific detection of food spoilers as well as an early enumeration and identification of specific contamination sources in factory processes, including food pathogens and food-borne parasites. In this chapter, we present an updated overview on FISH protocols for the microbiological analysis of food.