Project Highlights

Fresh-cut webinar series

Webinar series sign-up

We held a webinar series to share our research findings with interested industry stakeholders. We covered a variety of topics relevant to the fresh and fresh-cut produce industry and retail industry. Potential webinar topics included:

Novel washing processes for fresh-cut produce
Leafy-green wash water composition, implications for water reuse and reclamation
Microbial community analysis in a commercial fresh-cut processing facility
Application of fluid dynamics modeling and image analysis to produce washing
Tomato packinghouse safety and cross-contamination risk during washing
Retail display case temperature abuse and product quality and economic implications of adding doors to refrigerated display cases

Please sign-up for the webinar series here and let us know what topics you are most interested in, should we decide to offer more in the future.

Visualization of pathogen movement inside tomatoes

Download the paper pdf.
Bourouiba group - droplets and diseases in humans and plants

Bourouiba group's research featured by Science Friday and HHMI
Keith Schneider - foodborne pathogen survival in the environment

Keith R. Schneider, Professor at University of Florida, research focuses on foodborne pathogen survival in the environment, while his extension outreach efforts focused on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Because of the new regulation the Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) training program has been replaced by Produce Safety Alliance Grower trainings and Preventive Control Human Food training programs.
Bourouiba group - fluid dynamics shaping pathogen transmission through water

Focusing on the interface of fluid dynamics and epidemiology, the Bourouiba Group aims to elucidate the fundamental physical mechanisms shaping the transmission dynamics of pathogens in human, animal, and plant populations where drops, bubbles, multiphase and complex flows are at the core.
Optimizing fresh produce storage condition (video)

Dr. Luo and Dr. Atilio de Frias are sharing their innovative research on produce storage condition and their own recommendations on how produce should be stored in your grocery stores.
Novel research tools, artificial plant surface and microfluidic device (video)

Dr. Sunny Luo and her team of scientists developed 2 innovative tools for research and monitoring.
Chlorine interaction with organic load in lettuce wash water (video)

In this video Dr. Sunny Yaguang Luo and Dr. Patricia Millner talks to us about chlorine interaction in wash water. It's important to monitor chlorine in your wash water, find out why!
Groundbreaking research helped the industry to develop science- and risk-based food safety practices

Groundbreaking research helped the industry to develop science- and risk-based food safety practices
Chlorine (as sodium hypochlorite, NaOCl) has been widely used due to low cost, ease of use, and efficacy in pathogen inactivation. However, chlorine is rapidly depleted by reaction with organic exudates from cut vegetable tissues, debris, and soil that accumulate in reused and recirculated wash water. Processors traditionally have used a free-chlorine level of 1 ppm as the “Control Limit” and re-wash as the “Corrective Action” in Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) programs. With advances in understanding chlorine inactivation of bacterial pathogens, questions arose concerning this produce washing practice. However, no scientific data were available to guide the industry changes.
Microfluidic mixer allows determination of pathogen inactivation by chlorine in less than 1 second

Microfluidic mixer allows determination of pathogen inactivation by chlorine in less than 1 second
Preventing pathogen survival and cross-contamination during produce washing requires specific information about how exposure time and free chlorine affect pathogen inactivation. The FDA and the produce industry need data exposure-dose data on time scales of 1 sec or less to develop science- and risk-based food safety regulations and practices to support implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Because conventional approaches are unable to provide data on this time scale, scientists at the USDA-ARS designed, fabricated, and demonstrated a novel microfluidic micromixer to determine pathogen inactivation kinetics on time scales as short as 0.1 second.
Effectively Removing the Organic Exudate

In current fresh-cut processing, harvested produce is generally cut and then washed to remove "organic exudate" (such as juices and/or a more viscous pulpy matter) that has leaked from freshly-cut surfaces. This organic exudate reacts immediately and continuously with chlorine and other sanitizers, and consequently reduces the level of free chlorine or other sanitizers in the washing solution. Free chlorine and other sanitizers can be replenished through the "make-up" addition of chemicals, but the continuing accumulation of organic material in the wash solution requires addition of ever-larger amounts of sanitizer chemicals in order to maintain an adequate concentration of active sanitizer for sanitizing produce and preventing microbial cross-contamination.
Developed a chlorine-dosing program that transforms chlorine control from feedback to feedforward, eliminating trial-and-error iteration
Developed biomimetic plant surface fabrication technology that facilitates reproducible studies of microbial disinfection and eliminates leaf-to-leaf variability in experiments with real produce
Developed and tested a cost-effective approach to reduce temperature abuse and minimize pathogen proliferation during retail display of bagged salad
Engaged and empowered stakeholders with scientific information