Food Microbiology
The total lethality of a heat process expressed as equivalent minutes at a reference temperature. F0 is the reference at 121.1 °C with z = 10 °C.
Used by food engineers to design a canning (retort) process that guarantees a can is actually safe, not just cooked through.
The time at a given temperature required to destroy 90% of a microbial population — one log reduction.
The temperature increase required to reduce the D-value by a factor of ten — the slope of the thermal death time curve.
The commercial sterility standard for low-acid canned food: a heat process delivering twelve decimal reductions of Clostridium botulinum spores.
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