Peter Muriana's Food Microbiology Lab

03/25/2026

Congratulations to my graduate students for being awarded a Stanley Gilliland Memorial Fellowship ($1,000) that was presented at the FAPC Research Symposium Awards Ceremony.

03/25/2026

Congratulations to my graduate students for being awarded 1st place (Pratikchhya Adhikari), 2nd place (Wyatt McCune), and 3rd place (Caitlyn Quinn) at the R.M. Kerr Food & Ag Products Center Food Science Research Symposium (March 24, 2026).

12/10/2025

12/10/2025

Congratulations to my PhD student, Mrs. Pratikchhya Adhikari (and co-authors), on publication of her first 2 research papers on safety of air-dried beef.

The first one shows new evidence that challenges an existing regulatory practice in that acid-adapted Salmonella cultures are more sensitive to biltong & droewors processing of air-dried meat. Regulatory bodies are promoting the use of acid-adapted challenge cultures for process validation of acidic processing treatments with the intent that they would be more tolerant to the actions of acid thereby needing a robust process to obtain adequate pathogen reduction. Our results found the opposite for Salmonella and emphasizing that the requirement to use acid-adapted cultures in challenge studies should be carefully evaluated.

-> https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8007/5/4/106

The second paper shows that since we could not achieve the targeted 5-log reduction of pathogens with non-acid-adapted cultures, we had to use an additional ingredient. Using a refined liquid smoke extract (reduced flavor and color), we were able to achieve >7-log reductions with Salmonella serovars, Listeria monocytogenes, and STEC E. coli during processing resulting in a safe product.

-> https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8007/5/4/145

11/22/2024

Check out this video on recent food safety concerns featuring insights from Oklahoma State University Animal and Food Sciences Professor, Dr. Peter Muriana, along with Kendra Dougherty from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. During their discussion, they address a significant recall from an Oklahoma facility and share valuable insights on the importance of food safety. Don’t miss this critical conversation!

https://youtu.be/dBIHo-K44ls?si=lylp4veVato2OuNb

08/20/2024

Setting up another fermenter run with gastrointestinal fluid from pig small intestine vs cecum, supplemented with ground feed given to pigs in our pig trials from which we will pull samples for microbiome analysis (start vs finish) and to plate in biochemical assay agar media looking for proteolytic, saccharolytic, lipolytic, and cellulolytic bacteria). We have hook ups to base to maintain desired pH and pumping in nitrogen for anaerobic environment. The reason i’m proud of this setup is that it is a good condition old system, 14 years past service life where the (young) tech service guys told me they could not help me fix it, but sometimes tenacity (and stubbornness) sometimes win out. 🤭🤗.

07/28/2024

USDA-NIFA Project Director's Meetings. Just got back from my 3rd USDA-NIFA project director's meeting in 5 weeks (the PI on USDA-NIFA grants are supposed to show up every year and give an update on what was done on research with their grant funding you were provided).

The 1st one was at UMass (Amherst, MA) on our 2-year seed grant: Stability and Increased Functionality of Several Bacillus Strains with Probiotic Properties, in the Novel Foods & Innovative Manufacturing Technologies grant program category.

The 2nd one was at the start of the IAFP Annual Conference (Long Beach, CA) on our 3-year standard grant: "Filling USDA-FSIS Food Safety `Knowledge Gaps`: The Safety of Ambient-Temperature Air-Dried Beef (Droewors)", in the Food Safety & Defense grant program category.

The 3rd one was at the tail end of the AAAS Annual Meeting (Calgary, Canada) on our 2-year seed grant: "In Vitro And In Vivo Evaluation of Bacteria from Swine-Related Sources as Direct-Fed Probiotics for Enhanced Feed Utilization", in the Animal Nutrition, Growth and Lactation grant program category.

05/17/2024

05/17/2024

As a university researcher, there is always an abundance of equipment that gets older each passing year and when budgets are tight, especially towards equipment, you often become Mr. Fixit by default (i also enjoy this part). So i have found several research applications for an old (still looks very good) Sartorious Braun BioStat Q fermenter that is more than 12-13 years past end of service life from the company. The young tech service guys are quick to remind me of that. But thanks to some old stallwarts like Donald Kiefer who has helped and kept this in the ballgame and me into additional research. But now we are using it to identify potential animal probiotics that will be used in feeding trials. So have it set up with temperature control, pH meters and pH control (base), addition of nitrogen (N2) gas for anaerobic conditions, and slight stirring. Kavya Gavai, my PhD student is doing this research. We are using gastrointestinal and stomach fluid from pigs harvested at the FAPC abattoir, clarifying them by centrifugation, adding ground up feed fed to baby pigs at 1 and 4 weeks (Phase1 and Phase4 feed), and analyzing the results by direct plating on bioassay agars to detect proteolytic, lipolytic, saccharolytic, and cellulolytic organisms) as well as isolating DNA for submission for microbiome analysis of microbial abundance of organisms comparing the start to finish using either Phase1 or Phase4 feed. I'm having a bit of difficulty with the software side of this capturing the data to print out nice graphical display of data; the current run is manually controlled by the Digital Control Unit panel, but it can also be controlled, and data collected, by software.

12/30/2023

Microsoft Windows Automatic Update has problems; cumulative updates are not installing. I was finally able to run an "In Place Upgrade" (keeps files and apps; not a ‘clean install’) a certain way that worked.

I like my computer running smoothly, devoid of disk errors and problems. The process I have for security, weekly cleanup, and biweekly error-checking and cleanup includes:

A. Security (these two work good together; always running):
1) Microsoft Defender (weekly quick scan; monthly full scan)
2) Malwarebytes Premium

B. Weekly Cleanup:
1) CCleaner:
a. Custom Clean
b. Registry Cleaner

C. PC Hard Drive Error Cleanup (See included image for details on these):
1) CHKDSK /F,
2) SFC /Scannow, and
3) DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth methods of checking for, and cleaning up, hard drive errors.

Recently, I had several problems simultaneously. Windows update was not ‘updating’ to Win11 Pro ver. 23H2. Under automatic update, it would download the update and let me choose when it should install usually requiring a reboot with several re-starts that would advance to further several stages of the install. No go, it would get to 95% and give up saying “something went wrong, we will remove the installation files” and returns me to prior state. This is all over the internet…. Lots of people having problems with automatic updates not installing. Lots of solutions offered and they aren’t working (I’ve tried a dozen or so). So this has not been able to install for a month. At the same time, I ran disk error checking as stated in above to see if errors were preventing the updates, but they came back saying they couldn’t be run because there is a previous process that needs to be completed upon a restart (but the restart never allows it to be completed and error checking still is not allowed and keeps referencing the uncompleted prior process.
OK, so I’m trying to run a manual cumulative upgrade from Microsoft’s Windows Update Catalogue (https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=windows%2011 ); that doesn’t work.

This worked!!! =>
OK, so now I’m annoyed that nothing has been working and lookup a nicely laid out “in place repair upgrade” using a Win 11 Iso file download from https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11 under the third section, Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices on that link (it just gives you a single multi-version ISO file to download and includes the Windows 11 Update to ver 23H2 that wasn’t installing by the automatic windows update feature). This allows you to keep files and apps (programs) but upgrades the OS in the background. I ran the in-place-repair-upgrade exactly as stated in:
How to perform repair upgrade in Windows 11 - Microsoft Community:
• https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-perform-repair-upgrade-in-windows-11/8099a5ae-8afc-406f-864d-8d13c3742d8d?from=GetHelpBCQR&CorrelationId=7cfee83c-8b0e-4886-acd9-e9688e707359&ocid=OO_Core_NEU_GetHelp_DG_GetHelp_Solutions

It not only updated windows to the new cumulative update version (22H2 => 23H2) but got rid of my disk error problems whereby I can run SFC and DISM. All is now good in my PC…. I can sleep at night now.