WELCOME TO COMBASE

The ComBase Initiative is a collaboration between the Food Standards Agency and the Institute of Food Research from the United Kingdom; the USDA Agricultural Research Service and its Eastern Regional Research Center from the United States; and the Australian Food Safety Centre of Excellence.

Its purpose is to make data and predictive tools on microbial responses to food environments freely available via web-based software. The ComBase Database (accessible via the ComBase Browser) consists of thousands of microbial growth and survival curves that have been collated in research establishments and from publications. They form the basis for numerous microbial models presented in ComBase Predictor, a useful tool for industry, academia and regulatory agencies. They can be used in developing new food technologies while maintaining food safety; in teaching and research; in assessing the microbial risk in foods or setting up new guidelines.

ComBase is a database that contains information about how microorganisms respond to different environments. The information in ComBase is referred to as “quantitative microbiological” data since it describes how levels of microorganisms, both spoilage organisms and pathogens, change over the course of time.

The primary goal of the ComBase consortium is to improve efficiency in locating specific microbiological information, provide a more rapid means to compare data from different laboratories, and to reduce unnecessary redundancy in conducting microbiological studies.

Using an Internet interface, the user identifies criteria that they are interested in for a foodmicrobiology scenario(s). This includes identifying a type or species of organism, a type or class of food, pH, temperature, water activity (or NaCl concentration), and specific food conditions. Alternatively, ComBase customers may be interested in retrieving data donated by a specific source (publication, organisation or researcher).

The Internet version of ComBase was launched in June 2003. Since then, the database has been expanded to over 35,000 data records.

NEW! ComBase Modelling Toolbox

The Modelling Toolbox is a collection of software tools to predict microbial responses to an environment defined by three or more factors. Temperature, pH and water activity (usually as a function of NaCl) are the core factors but, for some organisms, the effect of a fourth factor, such as CO2, nitrite, etc are also featured.

The most generic program of the Toolbox is ComBase Predictor, where the model is based on observations made in culture media. Its growth models represent fail-safe, conservative predictions. It is a modified, augmented and improved web-version of the Growth Predictor stand-alone program downloadable from here. ComBase Predictor comprises a set of twenty growth models, seven thermal death models and two non thermal survival models.

In addition, specific predictors are also available, where a certain food + organism scenario (known to be hazardous in terms of food safety, e.g. Clostridium perfringens in meat) is considered.

Some other tools, such as DMFit are useful for users to create their own predictive models from data available via the ComBase Browser.

Access ComBase Modelling Toolbox

ComBase Browser

In September 2006, very significant improvements were made to ComBase, specifically in the search and output features. These include:

Searching by food, organism and environmental condition

• Greater differentiation of types of food (19 categories) and organisms (29 categories)
• Expansion of food environment categories to 5 (atmosphere, preparation, additives, microflora, other)
• Description of the number of data records for each search item so that you know the depth of data BEFORE searching ComBase

Searching by source (i.e. data donor)

• Specific location of data source by specifying organism and food type
• Sortable format for all data sources - choose “All” for both organism and food category

Results pages

• A listing of hits for each search criteria so that you can see where to expand or narrow your query
• Results now presented in TWO formats: View Summary and View Details
• View Summary – quickly sort your data by data I.D., food type, food subtype, temperature, pH, water activity, conditions, and source. Narrow your output by clicking and excluding specific records
• View Details – examine details of individual records, see the plotted data using an improved graphic interface and download the record
• Download up to 500 records at a time from the results table or from the View Summary page

Integrated modelling tools

• Two options: Compare with Prediction and Fit the Data
• Compare with Prediction – compare individual ComBase data records with worst-case scenarios based on broth-pure culture model predictions (lag or no-lag)
• Fit the Data – fit ComBase data to one of 5 different model forms and obtain lag time and growth rate
• Fit YOUR data – within the Fit the Data feature choose a model and obtain growth parameters for your data

For further information, contact the ComBase support team