OVISSIPOUR: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO ADDRESS FOOD SAFETY ISSUES IN MINIMALLY PROCESSED FOODS, USING NOVEL SANITIZERS AND EDIBLE SENSORS

Objectives The long-term goal of this project is developing tools for addressing the food safety concerns in fresh produce, seafood, aquaculture and aquaponics industry. This will be accomplished through a comprehensive and collaborative research plan to develop bio-based sanitizers and non-living edible surrogate for sanitation verification in seafood and food industry. Our main hypothesis is that the bio-based antimicrobial compounds will be activated by applying UV-A light, and will reduce bacteria in water, plant and fish products surface. We hypothesize that the non-living surrogate such as DNA, will respond to certain sanitizers similar to live bacteria, and we will be able to measure and quantify the response to develop predictive models for sanitizers concentration and bacterial reduction. The hypothesis will be analyzed with the objectives listed below: Objective 1: Develop bio-based antimicrobial strategies to reduce foodborne pathogens.Hypothesis: Development of bio-based antimicrobial interventions will reduce foodborne pathogens on seafood and fresh produce. Approach: Different approaches will be used to answer the scientific questions by developing plant-based antimicrobials such as gallic acid, and ferulic acid, in combination with mild physical stressors such as UV-A light, to reduce pathogenic microbes on seafood and fresh produce.Objective 2: Reduce the fish water-borne disease using plant-based antimicrobial strategies. Hypothesis: Development of plant-based antimicrobial interventions will reduce fish pathogens in recirculating aquaculture system water with high organic load.Approach: We will apply Obj. 1 approaches for inactivating water-borne pathogens including clinically isolated Aeromonas hydrophila which is important for fish aquaculture and aquaponics. Objective 3: Develop edible surrogate as a rapid tool for sanitation verification. Hypothesis: Spectroscopic approaches will detect oxidative damage in surrogate edible particles and the response will be similar to the oxidative damage induced in target bacteria and can be correlated to inactivation of target bacteriaApproach: Vibrational spectroscopy such as Raman will be used to determine the oxidative damages in bacterial cells and in edible surrogates such as DNA. The responses will be quantified using chemometrics and mathematical modeling, which result in developing predictive model for identifying the sanitizer concentrations and bacterial log reduction.Edible DNA-based surrogate will be prepared according to our previous study (26). Briefly, pure DNA will be deposited on Anodisc and will be used as a surrogate. As an alternative approach, we will use inactivated yeast or phage particles as edible surrogate.