DC11: Jorge Chavarria

About Jorge and His Academic Background

Jorge Alberto Chavarría Rodríguez comes from Nicaragua. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering with a concentration in Agroindustry and Quality Management from Universidad Centroamericana. During his bachelor’s studies, he developed an early interest in food safety, quality systems through a thesis project carried out in the brewing industry, focused on optimising Clean-In-Place systems used in beverage production.

This thesis experience became the starting point of his professional career in the brewing and beverage industry. After completing the project, Jorge continued his professional journey at Compañía Cervecera de Nicaragua, working there for almost seven years and progressing from Quality Assurance Intern to Quality Assurance Analyst, Food Safety and Quality Management Specialist, and finally R&D Project Coordinator. Across these roles, he gained experience in quality assurance, food safety management, HACCP, sensory evaluation, supplier quality, audits, microbial control, product stability, and new product development.

Before starting his PhD, Jorge completed the Erasmus Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems Engineering, Technology and Business, studying across KU Leuven (Belgium), Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Portugal), Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (Germany), and University College Dublin (Ireland). This international programme strengthened his multidisciplinary perspective on food science, sustainability, innovative food processing, microbial risk, chemometrics, data analysis, and sustainable brewing. During this period, he also completed a 10-month internship and master’s thesis at Puratos and KU Leuven in Belgium, working on a flavour characterisation project related to fats for baked goods applications.

About His Research

Jorge’s PhD research addresses microbial spoilage in wine and beer. Spoilage microorganisms can affect product quality, stability, shelf life, and sensory properties, creating technical and economic challenges for producers. Conventional stabilisation methods remain important in the beverage sector, but they may also present limitations related to chemical use, sensory impact, incomplete microbial control, or changing consumer expectations.

In this context, Jorge’s work focuses on biosourced and sustainable stabilisation treatments, including green, clean, and non-conventional approaches, as alternatives or complementary strategies for microbial spoilage control. His project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these treatments while also understanding why they work or behave depending on the spoilage microorganism, treatment conditions, and beverage matrix.

Within the SpoilControl project, Jorge contributes to the development of tailored and more sustainable solutions for the fermented beverage sector. While other doctoral candidates focus on topics such as biofilms, physical treatments, microbial ecology, spoilage mechanisms, consumer perception, or economic aspects, his research focuses on the interaction between biosourced stabilisation treatments, spoilage microorganisms, and wine or beer matrices.

His project combines microbiological analysis with physicochemical and colloidal characterisation. By evaluating microbial responses before and after treatment and studying changes in microbial surface and colloidal properties, Jorge aims to link treatment efficacy with possible mechanisms of action. This approach will help explain not only whether a treatment reduces microbial growth or survival, but also how treatment performance is influenced by matrix composition, treatment conditions, and microorganism characteristics.

Jorge’s thesis specifically focuses on:

• Selecting relevant spoilage microorganisms, wine and beer matrices, model systems, and sustainable and biosourced stabilisation treatments.
• Evaluating the antimicrobial efficiency of selected treatments using microbiological indicators such as growth behaviour, survival, CFU counts, growth/no-growth responses, and log reduction.
• Characterising microbial surface and colloidal properties before and after treatment using dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, and Nano Particle Tracking analyses.
• Understanding how beverage composition, treatment dose, contact time, treatment sequence or combination, and microorganism species or strain influence treatment performance.
• Integrating microbiological and physicochemical data to support standardised protocols, analytical workflows, treatment comparison outputs, quality schemes, and decision-support approaches for sustainable microbial spoilage control in wine and beer.

Motivation for the Project

Jorge was attracted to this PhD project because it brings together his experience in the brewing industry with his interest in food safety, quality, sustainability, and applied research. After several years working with fermented beverages, he became especially interested in how microbial control, sensory quality, product stability, and industrial feasibility are connected in real production environments. The focus on sustainable and biosourced stabilisation treatments was particularly meaningful to him, as it offers the opportunity to study these challenges from a deeper scientific perspective while contributing to practical solutions for producers. The international and multidisciplinary nature of SpoilControl also strongly motivated him, providing the chance to collaborate across countries and disciplines and contribute to more sustainable strategies for preserving the quality, stability, and identity of wine and beer.