Application of Bootstrap Method to Primary Model of Microbial Food Quality Change

Bootstrap method, a computer-intensive statistical technique to estimate the distribution of a statistic was applied to deal with uncertainty and variability of the experimental data in stochastic prediction modeling of microbial growth on a chill-stored food. Three different bootstrapping methods for the curve-fitting to the microbial count data were compared in determining the parameters of Baranyi and Roberts growth model: nonlinear regression to static version function with resampling residuals onto all the experimental microbial count data; static version regression onto mean counts at sampling times; dynamic version fitting of differential equations onto the bootstrapped mean counts. All the methods outputted almost same mean values of the parameters with difference in their distribution. Parameter search according to the dynamic form of differential equations resulted in the largest distribution of the model parameters but produced the confidence interval of the predicted microbial count close to those of nonlinear regression of static equation.