Cold atmospheric plasma to control pathogenic microorganisms in agrifood systems

Abstract

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has generated great interest from the industrial sector and scientific community as a non-thermal antimicrobial technology, due to its valuable properties such as operational simplicity, low operating cost, and being environmentally friendly. CAP can be generated from various gases (air, nitrogen, helium, argon) using different methods. Its applications include multiple areas such as medicine, electronics, food science, and agriculture, among others. One of the main characteristics of CAP is its ability to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms through the generation of free radicals which disrupt cells membranes and generate their apoptosis. Therefore, various researchers have determined the effects of treatments with CAP on different food products, of vegetal and animal origin, contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms. In general, it has been found that CAP significantly reduces the microbiological load on different foods, without affecting their nutritional properties and quality in most cases. This shows that CAP is an innovative and effective tool to be used for the inactivation of microorganisms in food products.