Salmonella inactivation and rapid cooling of fresh cut apples by plasma integrated low-pressure cooling

Fresh food products, including fruits, vegetables, raw meat, and poultry, have been associated with safety concerns and quality issues, owing to their susceptibility to rapid deterioration and microbial contamination. This research aimed to develop an integrated process to simultaneously cool and decontaminate high moisture food products. Cold plasma (CP), a novel decontamination technology, was integrated with vacuum cooling to develop a plasma integrated low-pressure cooling (PiLPC) process. To evaluate the rapid cooling and microbial inactivation efficacies of the PiLPC process, fresh cut Granny Smith apples and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium ATCC 13311 were used as the model food and microorganism, respectively. The influence of process parameters including treatment time, pressure, and post-treatment storage, on the inactivation of Salmonella on fresh-cut apples was investigated. Inactivation of Salmonella increased with treatment time, with a maximum reduction of 3.21 log CFU/g after 5 min of CP treatment at atmospheric pressure. Inactivation of Salmonella after CP treatment at 200 mbar was not significantly different from that at atmospheric pressure for the same treatment time. CP treatment of 3 min at 200 mbar followed by a post-treatment storage of 3 days at 4 degrees C reduced the total Salmonella population on cut apple slices by > 6 log CFU/g. The temperature of the cut apples was reduced from room temperature to 2 degrees C in 3 to 9 min depending on the sample surface area to volume ratio, when the pressure was reduced to 7 mbar. However, this PiLPC process resulted in moisture loss in cut apples. The results of this study indicate the potential of the PiLPC process for rapid cooling and microbial inactivation of fresh food products in a single process.