Valorization of Cold Plasma Technologies for Eliminating Biological and Chemical Food Hazards

Abstract

The importance of addressing food safety is undeniable in today’s globalized food industry. Conventional thermal treatments negatively affect the nutritional and quality attributes of foods. Recently, non-thermal processing technologies have drawn much attention from the food industry and food research communities. Empirical data is available on the effectiveness of cold plasma, an emerging non-thermal technology, for eliminating chemical and biological hazards. This review aims to provide an overview of the impact of cold plasma on the major food hazards, including bacteria, bacterial spores, fungi, fungal spores, biofilms, viruses, mycotoxins, pesticides, and allergens. Cold plasma can effectively eliminate food hazards described above due to its numerous stress factors, including reactive oxygen/nitrogen species, charged particles, neutral or excited atoms and molecules, high energetic electrons, ultraviolet radiation, and electromagnetic fields. The oxidation, structural alteration, and destruction of cell components, dissociation of chemical bonds of mycotoxins as well as pesticides, and structural modification of allergens are the main inhibitory mechanisms of cold plasma. In several cases, nutritional and sensory attributes of cold plasma-treated foods were reported to be remained intact, and their shelf lives were extended. The factors affecting the decontamination efficacy of cold plasma are the treatment conditions, type of treated substrate, and the contaminants’ characteristics.