En Solucion Inc — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase II: 8.5

Description

As demand for fresh produce continues to grow so do impacts to consumers from foodborneillnesses and disease outbreaks and to growers from product loss due to decay pathogens.Postharvest wash is a critical control point in fresh produce processing for reducing or eliminatingpathogens and other field-acquired contaminants that can result in such outbreaks and losses.Current methods of postharvest washing provide less than 100% efficacy and are generallyacknowledged to have negative environmental and worker safety impacts. En Soluci³n hasdeveloped a novel intervention which utilizes nano-sized bubbles of gases at the point ofpostharvest wash. Aqueous nanobubble mixtures are shown to have novel surface cleaningcapabilities due to the high surface area-to-volume ratio of the gas bubbles contained in solution.Unlike traditional macro-sized bubbles the nanobubbles have the remarkable ability to remainstable in high concentrations for months at a time. During the Phase I project En Soluci³n fullyvalidated the effectiveness of its nanobubble technology as a pathogen neutralizer in postharvestprocessing by conducting pathogen inactivation studies on produce surfaces and in wash water andby demonstrating the ability of nanobubble wash water to affect pathogen shedding into the washwater. In Phase II En Soluci³n will move forward with field testing of its technology to integratethe technology in a pilot program for year-round apple processing demonstrating improvementsover existing methodologies in terms of pathogen control worker and environmental safety costimpact on the product and consumer acceptability.