Recent developments for controlling microbial contamination of nuts

Abstract

In recent years, the consumption of nuts has shown an increasing trend worldwide. Nuts are an essential part of several countries’ economies as an excellent source of nutrients and bioactive compounds. They are contaminated by environmental factors, improper harvesting practices, inadequate packaging procedures, improper storage, and transportation. The longer storage time also leads to the greater chances of contamination from pathogenic fungi. Nuts are infected with Aspergillus species, Penicillium species, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Listeria monocytogenes. Therefore, nuts are associated with a high risk of pathogens and mycotoxins, which demand the urgency of using techniques for enhancing microbial safety and shelf-life stability. Many techniques such as ozone, cold plasma, irradiation, radiofrequency have been explored for the decontamination of nuts. These techniques have different efficiencies for reducing the contamination depending on processing parameters, type of pathogen, and conditions of food material. This review provides insight into decontamination technologies for reducing microbial contamination from nuts.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Aflatoxin
• almonds
• Escherichia coli
• pistachios
• postharvest
• Salmonella
• storage

Authors contributions

Search in databases was conducted by Shabir Ahmad Mir and Manzoor Ahamd Shah; screening papers and data extraction by Tahira Sidiq; writing and proofreading the manuscript by Mohammad Maqbool Mir, Mohammed Wasim Siddiqui, Kappat Valiyapeediyekkal Sunooj, Krystian Marszałek and A. Mousavi Khaneghah. Supervision by Amin Mousavi Khaneghah and Valiyapeediyekkal Sunooj.

Availability of data and materials

Data openly available in a public repository

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.