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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania » Eastern Regional Research Center » Microbial and Chemical Food Safety » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #386549
Research Project: Integration and Validation of Alternative and Multiple Intervention Technologies to Enhance Microbial Safety, Quality, and Shelf-life of Food

Location: Microbial and Chemical Food Safety

Title: Surface Pasteurization of Fresh Pomelo Juice Vesicles by Gaseous Chlorine Dioxide

Author
item LIN, XIAN - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item CHEN, GAOHUI - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item Jin, Zhonglin
item LI, XIANGYU - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item XU, YUJUAN - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item XU, BAOJUN - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item WEN, JING - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item WU, JIJUN - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item YU, YUANSHAN - Guangdong Academy Of Agricultural Sciences

Submitted to: Journal of Food Safety
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2022
Publication Date: 3/18/2022
Citation: Lin, X., Chen, G., Jin, Z.T., Li, X., Xu, Y., Xu, B., Wen, J., Wu, J., Yu, Y. 2022. Surface pasteurization of fresh pomelo juice vesicles by gaseous chlorine dioxide. Journal of Food Safety. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfs.12975.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jfs.12975

Interpretive Summary: Fresh-cut fruits such as fresh pomelo juice vesicles are very sensitive to thermal treatments which cause quality deterioration. This study was to develop a nonthermal pasteurization method to inactivate harmful microorganisms with least impact on food quality. Fresh pomelo juice vesicles were treated with gaseous chlorine dioxide (ClO2) inside a package when moisture vapor from the fresh produce interacted with a ClO2 precursor. The ClO2 treatments reduced over 99.9999% of E. coli and 99% of fungi on fresh pomelo juice vesicles and did not significantly affect most of their quality attributes. This study demonstrated an effective approach to enhance the microbial safety of fresh-cut produce while maintaining their quality.

Technical Abstract: This study was to develop an in-package pasteurization system that releases gaseous chlorine dioxide (ClO2) triggered by the moisture vapor from a packaged fresh produce. The samples were placed in sealed containers (750 mL) containing mixtures (0.1~1.0 g) of sodium chlorite and citric acid powders (1:1) and treated for up to 15 min at 25'. Our results showed that, production of gaseous ClO2 was linearly correlated with the reaction time (R2>0.95), with mean concentrations in the range of 1.70~8.66 mg/L. The gaseous ClO2 treatments for 15 min significantly reduced E. coli and fungi populations on pomelo juice vesicles with reductions of 6 log and 2 log CFU/g, respectively. Perchlorate and chlorite in samples were not detected and chlorate was only detected when the mean ClO2 concentration was over 4.09 mg/L. The treatments did not significantly affect total soluble solids, total acids, pectin, malondialdehyde contents and color of pomelo juice vesicles. The contents of ascorbic acid, naringin and limonin and bitterness score decreased with the increase of mean ClO2 concentrations. Overall, our results demonstrate an effective nonthermal approach for microbial inactivation while maintaining the quality of fresh pomelo juice vesicles.