Zajeba Tabashsum
University of Maryland, USA
Title: Berry pomace extracts as natural sanitizer in controlling entericpathogens in fresh produce
Biography
Biography: Zajeba Tabashsum
Abstract
With growing trend of back yard, mixed crop-livestock or pasture/organic farming system, cross-contamination of produce specifically leafy-vegetables with enteric pathogens including Salmonella, Listeria and Escherichia coli is a major concern. Again produce-borne infections in the US are rising faster than ever causing thousands of hospitalizations and deaths yearly. It is also huge economic burden and major reason to recall produce products. So post-harvest processing is necessary to decrease contamination by enteric pathogens for safer products. As organic-farmers cannot use synthetic chemicals/antibiotic, they are desperately needed a natural-alternative to eliminate contaminants from produces. As an alternative approach, we verified the efficacy of berry pomace extract (BPE) which is high in phenolic compounds including flavan, flavanone, glucuronides, glucosides, quinolones, catechol, tannins, quercetin, chlorogenic acid, gallic acid, and xanthoxic acid as sanitizer in controlling enteric pathogen Salmonella from fresh produces. For this purpose spinach and celery were decontaminated for any natural contamination and spiked with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (ATCC® 14028™) and dipped into BPE or water for same time period and reduction in bacterial load and alteration in virulent-gene expression level was determined. There was significant reduction in bacterial number from 0.5-3.5 log with BPE treatments when compared to dipping into water also reduced bacterial number but not as efficiently. The expression of virulent-genes were also altered significantly by BPE treatments. Our findings indicated that BPE can be a potential natural alternative to replace synthetic chemical sanitizer to eliminate/reduce major enteric bacterial pathogens particularly Salmonella in produces and limit salmonellosis in human.