Injury and repair of yeasts and moulds

Most information pertaining to injury and repair of micro-organisms has accumulated as a result of investigations on bacteria. Recently, however, increased attention has been focused on the effect of sublethal stress on the behaviour of yeasts and moulds and the available data indicate that a wide range of physiological and morphological types of these organisms are subject to injury upon exposure to adverse environmental conditions. Such cells require optimum recovery conditions if repair and eventual cell germination and/or division are to occur. Consequently, knowledge of the susceptibility of yeasts and moulds to sublethal injury enables researchers to select enumeration procedures which will adequately resuscitate cells and thereby give more accurate estimations of the mycological quality of foods.