Abstract
Enterococcus faecalis is a life-threatening bacterium that resists high levels of antibiotics or chemical preservatives. In this study, we aimed to investigate the inactivation of E. faecalis in fresh pineapple juice (FPJ) with two different cold atmospheric plasmas (CAP) reinforced by H2O2/H2O cold vapor: a plasma jet and a surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD). CAP treatments for 300 s with plasma jet and 420 s with SDBD caused an 8.2 log reduction of E. faecalis. The concentration of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species induced in FPJ by plasmas was also evaluated. In terms of quality attributes of FPJ, no noticeable color changes (ΔE) were observed. Furthermore, a trifle of loss of organic content such as sugars and organic acids was observed after treatments. These results suggest that our rapid CAP strategy effectively inactivated E. faecalis in FPJ with no change of color and negligible effects on other physicochemical properties.
Highlights
Enterococcus faecalis is a life-threatening bacterium that resists high levels of antibiotics or chemical preservatives
Evaluating the induced concentration of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the juice for both cold atmospheric plasmas (CAP) devices is essential to clarify which one of them could be more responsible for the inhibition of the bacteria described above
Evaluating the concentration of ROS radicals with spin-trapping and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) showed that plasma jet induces more ROS into the samples than surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD), the increase of concentration was observed during the treatment times in both devices
Summary
Enterococcus faecalis is a life-threatening bacterium that resists high levels of antibiotics or chemical preservatives. Disadvantages of traditional preservation methods have created a desire of designing new non-thermal technologies for inactivating microorganisms to upgrade the levels of food safety and quality These technologies, including intense cold atmospheric-pressure plasma (CAP), rely heavily on combining physical and chemical processes to disable or passivate a variety of microorganisms at low temperatures and short treatment times[2,11,12,13,14]. Our aims in this study were to (1) design and optimize CAP devices for food processing in industries to increase food safety and quality; (2) investigate the influence of CAP treatments on the conventional physicochemical properties of fresh pineapple juice (FPJ); (3) evaluate the concentration of the RONS in treated FPJ samples; (4) establishing an innovative strategy of plasma treatments for reliable and rapid disinfection of fruit juices
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