A lecturer at Ireland’s Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has begun breakthrough research that he hopes will extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables, reducing spoilage as well as safeguarding nutritional quality, Anthony Garvey reports.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney announced details of the project and 24 others as part of an £8.4 million investment by the Irish Government in agri-food research.
Dr PJ Cullen of the School of Food Science and Environmental Health at DIT says the aim of the £2 million EU-funded project called SAFE-BAG is to create a novel packaging system for food safety and shelf-life extension.
“The classical approach to extending the shelf life of fresh produce has been to wash it in chlorine to remove bacteria and mould, but there are environmental and health risks associated with its by-products,” said Dr Cullen.
According to Dr Cullen, in-pack non-thermal plasma can significantly reduce the microbial load of fresh fruits and vegetables and he says, an increasing number of consumers are demanding products which are free from harmful chemicals, which is where SAFE-BAG comes in.
“Our approach has been to create a new in-pack decontamination system for fresh-cut produce. We reduce microbes on fresh produce by passing the plastic packaging through a dielectric plasma discharge. This deactivates the bacteria, protecting the texture, taste and nutritional properties of packaged fruit and vegetables.”
Once ready, the SAFE-BAG system will be extensively tested at fresh fruit and vegetable processing facilities, according to Dr Cullen. He says the developers of SAFE-BAG are committed to making this system affordable, robust and easy to maintain.
The SAFE-BAG consortium is made up of 11 project partners from 8 EU Member States as well as industry representatives from the fresh-cut processing supply chain and engineering and equipment industries, who will ensure that the results of the project are used and exploited in the marketplace. One of the businesses involved in the project is Fullwell Mill Foods, the organic, fair-trade and healthy foods manufacturer based in Sunderland.
