## 3 Results and Discussion
### Shelf-Life Study
#### 3.1.1 Microbial Growth
Figure 1 presents the fitting between the experimental data and the mathematical model curves, showing that [PERSON] and [PERSON]'s 1994 model [31] is a well-fitted primary  
Figure 1: Isothermal growth data and fitted [PERSON] and [PERSON] (1994) [31] model curves for APC in the four different categories of bacon samples, under different temperature storage conditions: (**a**) at 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C, (**b**) at 10 \({}^{\circ}\)C, and (**c**) at 15 \({}^{\circ}\)C. CNT represents the control case, RN corresponds to the bacon case with a 50% reduction in nitrites, RSE corresponds to the bacon case with a 50% reduction in nitrites and incorporation of the rose extract, and RSE-RSME indicates the bacon case with a 50% reduction in nitrites and incorporation of the rose–rosemary extract. model for APC microbial growth in bacon samples, something that is confirmed by the estimated SSE values, with the highest SSE value observed at 0.556 for all of the examined APC microbial data. Table 1 summarizes this model's statistical analysis and provides the parameters of [PERSON] and [PERSON]'s model (1994) [31]. As mentioned in the section above, for the secondary model, examining the effect of temperature on microbial growth, the Arrhenius model was selected based on a comparison of the SSE with other secondary models. As expected, at the lowest temperature of 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C (-refrigerated conditions), the lowest APC microbial growth rates and the maximum lag phase (\(\lambda\)) values for all of the examined bacon samples were observed. At the highest temperature tested (15 \({}^{\circ}\)C), no significant difference was observed between the samples of different antimicrobial compositions (RN vs. RSE vs. RSE-RSME) in terms of APC growth. The Arrhenius parameters for APC growth were estimated (Figure 2) and summarized in Table 2. Using these estimated Arrhenius parameters and comparing the maximum APC growth rate calculated from the Arrhenius equation, \(\mu_{\text{max}.\text{ref}}\) at T\({}_{\text{ref}}\) of 4 \({}^{\circ}\)C (an average refrigerator temperature, typical of storage conditions for bacon products), it is confirmed that the antimicrobial effect of replacing half of the nitrite content with rose extract (RSE) appears to be more efficient for APC microbial growth in bacon samples, followed by the traditional recipe containing the full amount of nitrites (CNT) and the rose-rosemary extract bacon samples (RSE-RSME), with the samples containing half of the nitrites (RN) coming in last, with a significant difference. The results concerning lactic acid bacteria microbial growth data were quite similar to what was observed based on APC data. Moreover, the RN category of samples, having a reduced nitrite content, presented the highest growth rates for all of the temperatures examined, with the value of \(\mu_{\text{max}}\) being equal to 0.213 d\({}^{-1}\) and 0.654 d\({}^{-1}\) at 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 15 \({}^{\circ}\)C, respectively. On the other hand, the antimicrobial effect of rose extract appeared to be more effective for LAB growth, with the RSE samples presenting the lowest \(\mu_{\text{max}}\) values, equal to 0.163 d\({}^{-1}\) and 0.615 d\({}^{-1}\) at 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C and 15 \({}^{\circ}\)C, respectively (Figure 3). For the other two groups tested (CNT/RSE-RSME), no significant differences were observed, with the conventionally produced samples (CNT) being more effective for LAB growth compared to the RSE-RSME samples containing the rose/rosemary extract. Figure 2: Arrhenius plots showing APC growth for the four different categories of bacon samples: (**a**) for the \(\mu_{\text{max}}\) and (**b**) for the lag phase (\(\lambda\)). The dotted lines represent the linear regression of the Arrhenius equations of the samples (blue: CNT samples; grey: RN samples; red: RSE samples; green: RSE–RSME samples).