Removal of pesticide residue from cherry tomatoes by hydrostatic pressure (Part 2)

Abstract

Abstract The food safety for polluted products has ignited more considerable interest in recent years. Internal penetrated and insoluble materials possess high persistence, and removing them is desired in the process of producing food. Hydrostatic pressure is a potential technology to efficiently inactivate the vegetative microorganisms, to extract internal substance and to remove hydrophobic matter from products as pressure level is controlled. Here we applied hydrostatic pressure to remove hydrophobic pesticide from cherry tomato loaded with close to maximum residue limits. Removing insoluble pesticide from products with several processing was reported, but so far complete removal has not been achieved. Taking these results into consideration, hydrostatic pressure with ethanol solution as the surrounding medium were performed, and led to complete removal at comparatively low pressure. Under these conditions, visual changes did not occur, toxic intermediates from pesticide were not detected, and nutrients from the samples were identified in the surrounding medium. Industrial Relevance This article demonstrates that hydrostatic pressure treatment with 10% ethanol solution can be a potential washing technology from the perspective of safety and harmless: can remove pollutant from cherry tomatoes and collect it from surrounding medium of them, without bringing about pollutant breakdown into more toxic materials. We believe that the existence of this treatment will be known as one of the safety food washing process among readers of your journal, and may eventually be used for food safety in the process of producing food.