Plant-Safe

"From Spore to Risk: Tackling Bacillus cereus in Plant-Based Food Systems"

The Plant-Safe project aims to improve microbial safety in plant-based foods by generating new, openly accessible knowledge about how Bacillus cereus spores behave in plant-derived matrices. The project focuses on understanding how plant ingredients influence spore survival and germination. 

⌐ The project has been granted 2.983.676 DKK in funding.  
⌐ The project starts on 1 March 2026 and will end on 31 December 2027.

Introducing the Plant-Safe project

Background for the project:

Spore-forming bacteria such as B. cereus represent a persistent challenge in plant-based foods because their spores can survive processing and later germinate, leading to spoilage or toxin formation. Today’s safety assessment tools are mostly developed for dairy and meat products and do not fully account for the unique nutritional and structural properties of plant matrices. This gap creates uncertainty for producers and may lead to overly cautious processing that reduces product quality. Plant-Safe addresses this need by providing plant specific data and predictive support for industry and researchers. 

The activities 

Plant Safe brings together microbiology, advanced analytical techniques, and predictive modelling in collaboration with university and industry partners. The project will study how B. cereus spores germinate in representative plant-based systems, such as protein rich and starch rich drinks. Using microcalorimetry, the team will monitor real time metabolic activity during early germination, while single cell Raman spectroscopy will reveal biochemical differences between spores within the same population. These insights will feed into new stochastic predictive models tailored to plant-based foods, ensuring that the knowledge can be used directly in practical safety assessments. 

Outcomes

The project will deliver the first systematic datasets describing spore germination in plant-based food matrices. These results will support the development of improved analytical workflows and predictive models that incorporate matrix-specific effects and microbial heterogeneity. All data, methods, and models will be shared openly. By reducing uncertainty in shelf-life prediction and helping companies avoid unnecessary over processing, Plant Safe contributes to safer, more sustainable, and more competitive plant-based food production.