Edible antimicrobial yeast-based coating with basil essential oil for enhanced food safety

Abstract

Foodborne pathogen contamination is recognized as a critical public health burden. The application of conventional antimicrobial strategies is significantly restricted in the food industry due to concerns over potential impacts on food quality and human health safety. Herein, this study developed a scalable methodology for encapsulating basil essential oil (BO) into yeast cell wall particles (YCWPs), creating edible antimicrobial coating suspensions for effective pathogen control on real food matrices. Thermal stability and long-term durability of the antimicrobial BO were enhanced after being encapsulated into the YCWPs, which served as a protective barrier, reducing the evaporation of small molecules in the BO mixture. In addition, benefiting from the specific affinity between the YCWP microcarriers and pathogens, the encapsulated BO with a high local concentration around the pathogens could avoid the unexpected consumption caused by organic pollutants encountered in the food system. The obtained BO@YCWPs demonstrated promising antimicrobial efficiency, even under high chemical oxygen demand (COD) conditions, achieving approximately 6 log CFU reductions of S. aureus and E. coli within 30 and 15 min, respectively. Moreover, the antimicrobial BO@YCWPs were suspended in an aqueous solution and then spray-coated onto the fresh basil leaves, significantly inhibiting the proliferation of various microorganisms and demonstrating the great potential application of the BO@YCWPs in ensuring food safety.