High Pressure Processing of Foods for Microbial and Mycotoxins Control: current trends and future prospects

Abstract

Consumers demand “fresh-like” and convenient products with preserved nutritional and organoleptic characteristics that can be kept for extended periods of time without compromising safety. This has posed greater challenges to food industries. High-pressure processing (HPP) can improve food safety by destroying the microorganisms that cause food-borne illness and spoilage that cause diseases. It also leads to the reduction of fungal toxic metabolites in food products when combined with moderate temperature. HPP holds promise as an emerging food treatment to process premium value food products while retaining food quality, maintaining natural freshness, and extends microbiological shelf life. This review presents current research findings associated with applying HPP as an emerging technology for microbial and mycotoxin control in the food industry and suggests future work.

Keywords:

• high pressure processing
• microbial inactivation
• mycotoxin control

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Most conventional food preservation methods often result in a number of undesirable changes in foods. Thus, there is a need for alternative food processing technologies, which effectively inactivate the microorganisms, while at the same time maintaining the quality of food. Due to the rise in consumers demand high quality and safe food products, novel processes such as high-pressure processing (HPP) are continuously explored to control microbial and mycotoxin contamination in food products. Immense research works have revealed the potential benefits of HPP as an alternative to conventional treatments. These benefits are apparent in various areas of food processing, and the present review provides an update on recent research findings for microbial and mycotoxin reduction and control in foods.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This review article did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Henock Woldemichael Woldemariam

Henock Woldemichael Woldemariam is a PhD candidate at the department of Chemical Engineering, Addis Ababa Institute of Technology with expertise in non-thermal food processing technologies with specific interest in high pressure processing and pulsed electric field processing technologies.

Shimelis Admassu Emire

Shimelis Admassu Emire is an associate professor in Addis Ababa Institute of Technology and does research in Food Processing and Agro-food industry business development. He has a great aspiration to work in the cutting-edge-research areas of Agro-food and Bio-System Engineering including Emerging Technologies and Food Quality Assurance Management Systems.