Abstract:In order to describe microbial death kinetics under microwave treatment, the sugar solution with orange particles was used as the research material. As the sample, Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes were suspended in sugar solution with orange particles. Two samples were exposed to microwave at 800W for 40 s, the bactericidal effect was evaluated. Linear, Weibull, log-logistic and Dose-Response functions were used to model survival curves of two pathogens in sample. The results showed that a treatment of 800W for 40s reduced the counts of Escherichia coli by 2.5 log10 and Listeria monocytogenes by 3.5 log10. Since the thermal sensitivity of two foodborne pathogens is different, the death rates of two foodborne pathogens were different in sterilization process. Both the survival curves showed a slow initial drop in bacterial counts followed by rapid drop when the treatment temperature to 60 ℃, the last tailing tail was caused by a diminishing inactivation rate. First order kinetic model can not be used to describe the law of microbial death under microwave sterilization. Weibull model, Log-Logistics Model and Dose-Response model all can better fit the inactivation of microorganisms. However, five model parameters were used for evaluating the stand or fall of model, the comparison of these indices indicates that Dose-Response model consistently produced better fits to inactivation data of Listeria monocytogenes than others. And Log-Logistic model had better fitting degree for Escherichia coli than others.