Irradiation to Ensure Safety and Quality of Fruit Salads Consumed in Bangladesh

Abstract

Food was, is and perhaps will be the greatest concern for humankind due to outbreak of foodborne diseases and for sake of good health. Food suppliers and/or industries follow various techniques for ensuring their food safety. One way to overcome this situation is the use of ionizing radiation applied to food for assuring microbial as well as nutritional safety concern. Here apple, grape, guava, pear and plum sample were treated with 0.5, 1 and 1.5 kGy radiation from a 60Co gamma irradiator. Changes of the native microflora and some specific nutritional and physico-chemical properties of irradiated fruit were determined. It was observed that 0.5 kGy irradiation dose reduce a significant amount of microbial load compared to control and 1 kGy irradiation reduce microbial load under the sanitary level recommended by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).Samples treated with 0.5kGy were healthier acceptance than samples treated by 1kGy and 1.5kGy during the six successive days of storage. Moisture content more than 90%were found in apple, plum and pear and statistically no significant changes (p<0.05) were observed in irradiated samples compared to the non-irradiated samples. At 1.5 kGy carotenoid content was increased 45.7926% in apple. Statistically significant increase of total carotenoid was observed in plum at 0.5, 1 and 1.5 kGy but the decrease in apple, pear and guava at dose 1 and 1.5 kGy. Thus, insignificant variation of ascorbic acid content was observed at radiation dose 1±0.5kGyin fresh cut fruit produce.