Research round-up: The role of INNUENDO and is Listeria afraid of light?

26-Feb-2016 - Last updated on 26-Feb-2016 at 14:53 GMT

Food safety research round-up - Tell us what you are working on!

Research is where it all begins for most fields and it can be true for food safety as well. A lot of what we have today spent some time at this stage before mass acceptance. FQN highlights some recent examples.

We begin with the creation of INNUENDO, which is a cross-sectorial platform for genomics integration in surveillance of foodborne pathogens

The 30 month project is coordinated by Mirko Rossi, assistant professor from the University of Helsinki, and co-financed by a grant of €500,000 from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Potential use of WGS analysis for public health protection is essentially restricted by the absence of accessible IT framework and a threshold of public health microbiologists in handling these novel methodologies.

The consortium includes governmental organisations, authorities and research institutes from the food, veterinary and human sectors, from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Portugal, Basque Autonomous Community in Spain and Austria.

Irradiation effects on quality

In other work, Chapman University researchers looked at the effects of irradiation on quality of blueberries and grapes treated at phytosanitary dose levels.

Blueberry varieties ‘Star’, ‘Jewel’, and ‘Snowchaser’ and grape varieties ‘Sugraone’ and ‘Crimson

Seedless’ were irradiated at a target dose of 400 Gy (range of 400–590 Gy for blueberries and 400–500 Gy for grapes) and stored for three and 18 days under refrigeration, plus three days at ambient temperatures.

Irradiated ‘Star’ blueberries maintained firmness and sensory scores and resisted decay but irradiated ‘Jewel’ blueberries decreased in firmness but sensory scores for overall liking were higher than the control following three weeks of storage.

‘Snowchaser’ blueberries were harvested late in the season and were not as affected by treatment or time due to initial compromised nature.

Firmness was the primary attribute affected by irradiation for both varieties of grapes, but sensory testing showed consumers did not have a preference for control or irradiated fruit.

There were differences among fruit varieties around attributes such as colour, weight loss, and soluble solids concentration (SSC)/titratable acidity (TA), but treatment effects were not significant.

“Our results show that both, blueberries and grapes, have a high tolerance for phytosanitary irradiation and that storage affects their quality more than irradiation treatment,” said the researchers.

Show Listeria the light

In other work, researchers have discovered Listeria activates protective mechanisms when exposed to light.

This discovery can be used by the food industry to prevent the spread of it, according to a dissertation at Umeå University in Sweden.

Christopher Andersson, doctoral student at the Department of Molecular Biology, also described the discovery of two new molecules that combat the pathogenicity of the Listeria bacterium.

"Hopefully, this new knowledge on how light and these small molecules affect the bacterium can, in future, be used to prevent the spread of Listeria and help treat listeriosis," said Andersson.

Bacteriophages in packaging

In response to our research request, Hany Anany, from the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety at the University of Guelph, shared work with Mansel Griffiths.

The pair are looking at putting bacteriophages into packaging to target foodborne pathogens such as E. coli and Anany said a product could be on the marketplace in the next few years.

Griffiths and Anany put phages on the paper used in delis for separating cheese and cold cuts.

Partners from McMaster University at the Sentinel Bioactive Paper Network developed a bio-ink that prints phages from an ink-jet printer onto paper.