Determination of the utility of ultraviolet-C irradiation for dried bay leaves microbial decontamination through safety and quality evaluations

Research trends and emerging physical processing technologies in mitigation of pesticide residues on various food products

The application of pesticides enhances food production vastly, and it cannot be prevented; longer fresh produce is contaminated with health-threatening pesticides even though traditional processing methods can remove these pesticides from food surfaces to a certain extent; novel emerging technologies such as cold plasma, ultrasound, electrolyzed water, and pulsed electric field could more effectively dissipate the pesticide content in food without the release of toxic residual on the food surface. The present review focuses on applying emerging technologies to degrade pesticide residues in great utility in the food processing industries. This review also discusses the pesticide removal efficacy and its mechanism involved in these technologies. The oxidation principle in cold plasma is recently gaining more importance for the degradation of pesticide residue in the food processing industries. Analysis of the emerging physical processing methods indicated greater efficacy in eradicating pesticide residues during agriculture processing. Even though the technologies such as EO (99% reduction in dimethoate), ultrasound (98.96% for chlorpyrifos), and irradiation (99.8% for pesticide in aqueous solution) can achieve promising results in pesticide degradation level, the rate and inactivation highly depend on the type of equipment and processing parameters involved in different techniques, surface characteristics of produce, treatment conditions, and nature of the pesticide. Therefore, to effectively remove these health-threatening pesticides from food surfaces, it is necessary to know the process parameters and efficacy of the applied technology on various pesticides.

Decontamination technologies for medicinal and aromatic plants: A review

Microbial quality assurance has always been an important subject in the production, trade, and consumption of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs). Most MAPs have therapeutic and nutritional properties due to the presence of active substances such as essential oils, flavonoids, alkaloids, etc. However, MAPs can become infected with microorganisms due to poor hygienic conditions during cultivation and postharvest processes. This problem reduces the shelf life and effective ingredients of the product. To overcome these problems, several technologies such as using ethylene oxide gas, gamma irradiation, and steam heating have been used. However, these technologies have disadvantages such as the formation of toxic by-products, low consumer acceptance, or may have a negative effect on the quality of MAPs. This requires a need for novel decontamination technology which can effectively reduce the biological contamination and minimize the food quality losses. In recent years, new technologies such as ozonation, cold plasma, ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, radiofrequency and combination of these technologies have been developed. In this review, biological contamination of MAPs and technologies used for their decontamination were studied. Also, the mechanism of inactivation of microorganisms and the efficacy of decontamination techniques on the qualitative and microbial characteristics of MAPs were investigated.