Abstract
Non-thermal Atmospheric Plasma (NTAP) is a cutting-edge technology which has gained much attention during the last decade in the food-processing sector as a promising technology for food preservation and maintenance of food safety, with minimal impact on the quality attributes of foods, thanks to its effectiveness in microbial inactivation, including of pathogens, spoilage fungi and bacterial spores, simple design, ease of use, cost-effective operation, short treatment times, lack of toxic effects, and significant reduction of water consumption. This review article provides a general overview of the principles of operation and applications of NTAP in the agri-food sector. In particular, the numerous studies carried out in the last decade aimed at deciphering the influence of different environmental factors and processing parameters on the microbial inactivation attained are discussed. In addition, this review also considers some important studies aimed at elucidating the complex mechanism of microbial inactivation by NTAP. Finally, other potential applications of NTAP in the agri-food sector, apart from food decontamination, are briefly described, and some limitations for the immediate industrial implementation of NTAP are discussed (e.g., impact on the nutritional and sensory quality of treated foods; knowledge on the plasma components and reactive species responsible for the antimicrobial activity; possible toxicity of some of the chemical species generated; scale-up by designing fit-for-purpose equipment).
Highlights
At present, consumers demand safe foods which meet other quality criteria that traditional food preservation methods do not meet, such as convenience, high nutritional and sensorial quality, long shelf life, freshness, additives-free status, environment-friendly processing and low production costs (Fernández et al, 2012)
The mechanical erosion of cellular envelopes could be due either to the impact of plasma energy particles, such as electrons and excited atoms (Butscher et al, 2016), or to the accumulation of charges in certain parts of the cell surface, which would lead to its permeabilization through the formation of pores, in a phenomenon known as electroporation (Laroussi et al, 2003)
Yost and Joshi (2015) reported that strains deficient in superoxide dismutase (SodA) were more rapidly inactivated by a nonthermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) treatment than wild-type strains. These results demonstrate the occurrence of reactive oxygen species within the cells during plasma treatments and suggest that the membrane is not the unique cellular component targeted by NTAP
Summary
Mercedes López 1,2*, Tamara Calvo 1, Miguel Prieto 1,2, Rodolfo Múgica-Vidal 3, Ignacio Muro-Fraguas 3, Fernando Alba-Elías 3 and Avelino Alvarez-Ordóñez 1,2. Non-thermal Atmospheric Plasma (NTAP) is a cutting-edge technology which has gained much attention during the last decade in the food-processing sector as a promising technology for food preservation and maintenance of food safety, with minimal impact on the quality attributes of foods, thanks to its effectiveness in microbial inactivation, including of pathogens, spoilage fungi and bacterial spores, simple design, ease of use, cost-effective operation, short treatment times, lack of toxic effects, and significant reduction of water consumption. This review article provides a general overview of the principles of operation and applications of NTAP in the agri-food sector. Other potential applications of NTAP in the agri-food sector, apart from food decontamination, are briefly described, and some limitations for the immediate industrial implementation of NTAP are discussed (e.g., impact on the nutritional and sensory quality of treated foods; knowledge on the plasma components and reactive species responsible for the antimicrobial activity; possible toxicity of some of the chemical species generated; scale-up by designing fit-for-purpose equipment)
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