Food Safety Needs Assessment for Georgia Specialty Crops

We conducted a needs assessment to determine food safety resources required by produce growers in Georgia. Most respondents were farm owners (52.5%), food safety managers (48.3%), and/or farm managers (34.2%). The most requested topics for training included how to improve food safety management skills and how to manage a food safety program. Of 120 respondents, 25 were unsure whether their operations were required to comply with the Produce Safety Rule. This information will guide Georgia food safety educators in developing materials and curricula for growers throughout Georgia. Additionally, our survey and findings may be of use to Extension professionals elsewhere in the Southeast and beyond

Characterization of the Basal and mTOR-Dependent Acute Pulmonary and Systemic Immune Response in a Murine Model of Combined Burn and Inhalation Injury

Severe burn injury leads to a cascade of local and systemic immune responses that trigger an extreme state of immune dysfunction, leaving the patient highly susceptible to acute and chronic infection. When combined with inhalation injury, burn patients have higher mortality and a greater chance of developing secondary respiratory complications including infection. No animal model of combined burn and inhalation injury (B+I) exists that accurately mirrors the human clinical picture, nor are there any effective immunotherapies or predictive models of the risk of immune dysfunction. Our earlier work showed that the mechanistic/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is activated early after burn injury, and its chemical blockade at injury reduced subsequent chronic bacterial susceptibility. It is unclear if mTOR plays a role in the exacerbated immune dysfunction seen after B+I injury. We aimed to: (1) characterize a novel murine model of B+I injury, and (2) investigate the role of mTOR in the immune response after B+I injury. Pulmonary and systemic immune responses to B+I were characterized in the absence or presence of mTOR inhibition at the time of injury. Data describe a murine model of B+I with inhalation-specific immune phenotypes and implicate mTOR in the acute immune dysfunction observed

The Planteome database:an integrated resource for reference ontologies, plant genomics and phenomics

The Planteome project (http://www.planteome.org) provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. The Planteome project is developing a plant gene annotation platform; Planteome Noctua, to facilitate community engagement. All the Planteome ontologies are publicly available and are maintained at the Planteome GitHub site (https://github.com/Planteome) for sharing, tracking revisions and new requests. The annotated data are freely accessible from the ontology browser (http://browser.planteome.org/amigo) and our data repository

Relative Cleanability and Sanitization of Blueberry Mechanical Harvester Surfaces

Berry crops are increasingly being harvested mechanically to reduce labor costs, but there is a lack of research on best practices for cleaning and sanitizing of mechanical harvesters to maintain proper food hygiene. Laboratory experiments were conducted with surface coupons cut from materials commonly used on blueberry harvesters, including polyethylene, high-density polyethylene, aluminum, extruded polycarbonate, acetal plastic, and stainless steel. Surfaces differed in their hydrophobicity and surface roughness, ranging from 0.04 µm for polycarbonate to 1.57 µm for acetal plastic. The relative cleanability of the surface coupons was assessed by determining the removal of an applied mock soil (dried blueberry puree) in a rinsing-shaking assay with distilled water at room temperature. Results showed that the amount of soil removed increased over time according to a negative exponential function, from 29.6% at 30 s to 40.3% at 240 s rinse time. Compared with the time effect, the differences in soil removal among surfaces were relatively small. The addition of cleaning agents and detergents did not improve soil removal, and the only treatment that removed significantly more soil than the water control was heated (50 °C) distilled water. In sanitization assays, three representative microorganisms were allowed to attach to surface coupons, then exposed to three different sanitizers (0.25% bleach with 200 ppm free-chlorine sodium hypochlorite, 0.30% SaniDate 5.0, or 1.0% No-Rinse Food Contact Cleaner Sanitizer). There was no significant surface effect on microbial reductions following sanitizer treatment. For Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, none of the sanitizers significantly reduced population densities below the water control. In contrast, surface populations of Rhodoturula mucilaginosa and Epicoccum nigrum were reduced significantly by all three sanitizers, with SaniDate (23.0% hydrogen peroxide + 5.3% peroxyacetic acid) resulting in the greatest reduction

Longitudinal Survey of Aeromonas hydrophila and Foodborne Pathogens in a Commercial Aquaponics System

Aquaponic production of fresh produce is a sustainable agricultural method becoming widely adopted, though few studies have investigated potential food safety hazards within commercial systems. A longitudinal study was conducted to isolate and quantify several foodborne pathogens from a commercial, aquaponic farm, and to elucidate their distribution throughout. The survey was conducted over 2 years on a controlled-environment farm containing Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa). Samples (N = 1,047) were collected bimonthly from three identical, independent systems, and included lettuce leaves, roots, fingerlings (7–126 d old), feces from mature fish (>126 d old), water, and sponge swabs collected from the tank interior surface. Most probable number of generic Escherichia coli were determined using IDEXX Colilert Quanti-Tray. Enumeration and enrichment were used to detect Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, Aeromonas spp., Aeromonas hydrophilia, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Generic E. coli, STEC, L. monocytogenes, and S. enterica were not detected in collected samples. P. aeruginosa was isolated from water (7/351; 1.99%), swabs (3/351; 0.85%), feces (2/108; 1.85%), and lettuce leaves (2/99; 2.02%). A. hydrophila was isolated from all sample types (623/1047; 59.50%). The incidence of A. hydrophila in water (X2 = 23.234, p < 0.001) and sponge samples (X2 = 21.352, p < 0.001) increased over time

Relative Cleanability and Sanitization of Blueberry Mechanical Harvester Surfaces

Berry crops are increasingly being harvested mechanically to reduce labor costs, but there is a lack of research on best practices for cleaning and sanitizing of mechanical harvesters to maintain proper food hygiene. Laboratory experiments were conducted with surface coupons cut from materials commonly used on blueberry harvesters, including polyethylene, high-density polyethylene, aluminum, extruded polycarbonate, acetal plastic, and stainless steel. Surfaces differed in their hydrophobicity and surface roughness, ranging from 0.04 µm for polycarbonate to 1.57 µm for acetal plastic. The relative cleanability of the surface coupons was assessed by determining the removal of an applied mock soil (dried blueberry puree) in a rinsing-shaking assay with distilled water at room temperature. Results showed that the amount of soil removed increased over time according to a negative exponential function, from 29.6% at 30 s to 40.3% at 240 s rinse time. Compared with the time effect, the differences in soil removal among surfaces were relatively small. The addition of cleaning agents and detergents did not improve soil removal, and the only treatment that removed significantly more soil than the water control was heated (50 °C) distilled water. In sanitization assays, three representative microorganisms were allowed to attach to surface coupons, then exposed to three different sanitizers (0.25% bleach with 200 ppm free-chlorine sodium hypochlorite, 0.30% SaniDate 5.0, or 1.0% No-Rinse Food Contact Cleaner Sanitizer). There was no significant surface effect on microbial reductions following sanitizer treatment. For Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, none of the sanitizers significantly reduced population densities below the water control. In contrast, surface populations of Rhodoturula mucilaginosa and Epicoccum nigrum were reduced significantly by all three sanitizers, with SaniDate (23.0% hydrogen peroxide + 5.3% peroxyacetic acid) resulting in the greatest reduction

Postharvest Reduction of Salmonella enterica on Tomatoes Using a Pelargonic Acid Emulsion

A novel produce wash consisting of pelargonic acid (PEL) emulsions was tested on tomatoes contaminated with a five-serovar Salmonella enterica cocktail. Ability to reduce contamination on the inoculated tomato surface, as well as mitigation of subsequent cross-contamination to uninoculated tomatoes washed in re-used/spent wash water were examined. Sanitizer efficacy was also examined over 1 and 7 d storage time (8 &deg;C, recommended for red ripe tomatoes) and in the presence of 0.5% (w/v) organic load. PEL performed statistically the same (p &le; 0.05) at both 30 mM and 50 mM concentrations and resulted in greater than 1, 5 and 6 log CFU/g Salmonella reductions at 0 h, 1 d and 7 d, respectively, when compared to a water-only or no rinse (NR) treatment. This was also a significantly greater reduction than was observed due to chlorine (sodium hypochlorite) and peroxyacetic acid (PAA) at all time points (p &le; 0.01). Organic load had no impact on sanitizer efficacy for all examined treatments. Finally, PEL had a deleterious impact on tomato texture. At 1 d, ca. 5 N and 7 N were required to achieve tomato skin penetration and compression, respectively, compared to &gt;9 N and 15 N required by all other treatments (p &le; 0.05). While PEL sanitizers effectively reduced inoculated Salmonella and subsequent transfer to uninoculated tomatoes, reformulation may be necessary to prevent deleterious quality impacts on produce

Postharvest Reduction of <i>Salmonella enterica</i> on Tomatoes Using a Pelargonic Acid Emulsion

A novel produce wash consisting of pelargonic acid (PEL) emulsions was tested on tomatoes contaminated with a five-serovar Salmonella enterica cocktail. Ability to reduce contamination on the inoculated tomato surface, as well as mitigation of subsequent cross-contamination to uninoculated tomatoes washed in re-used/spent wash water were examined. Sanitizer efficacy was also examined over 1 and 7 d storage time (8 °C, recommended for red ripe tomatoes) and in the presence of 0.5% (w/v) organic load. PEL performed statistically the same (p ≤ 0.05) at both 30 mM and 50 mM concentrations and resulted in greater than 1, 5 and 6 log CFU/g Salmonella reductions at 0 h, 1 d and 7 d, respectively, when compared to a water-only or no rinse (NR) treatment. This was also a significantly greater reduction than was observed due to chlorine (sodium hypochlorite) and peroxyacetic acid (PAA) at all time points (p ≤ 0.01). Organic load had no impact on sanitizer efficacy for all examined treatments. Finally, PEL had a deleterious impact on tomato texture. At 1 d, ca. 5 N and 7 N were required to achieve tomato skin penetration and compression, respectively, compared to >9 N and 15 N required by all other treatments (p ≤ 0.05). While PEL sanitizers effectively reduced inoculated Salmonella and subsequent transfer to uninoculated tomatoes, reformulation may be necessary to prevent deleterious quality impacts on produce

Characterization of the Basal and mTOR-Dependent Acute Pulmonary and Systemic Immune Response in a Murine Model of Combined Burn and Inhalation Injury

Severe burn injury leads to a cascade of local and systemic immune responses that trigger an extreme state of immune dysfunction, leaving the patient highly susceptible to acute and chronic infection. When combined with inhalation injury, burn patients have higher mortality and a greater chance of developing secondary respiratory complications including infection. No animal model of combined burn and inhalation injury (B+I) exists that accurately mirrors the human clinical picture, nor are there any effective immunotherapies or predictive models of the risk of immune dysfunction. Our earlier work showed that the mechanistic/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is activated early after burn injury, and its chemical blockade at injury reduced subsequent chronic bacterial susceptibility. It is unclear if mTOR plays a role in the exacerbated immune dysfunction seen after B+I injury. We aimed to: (1) characterize a novel murine model of B+I injury, and (2) investigate the role of mTOR in the immune response after B+I injury. Pulmonary and systemic immune responses to B+I were characterized in the absence or presence of mTOR inhibition at the time of injury. Data describe a murine model of B+I with inhalation-specific immune phenotypes and implicate mTOR in the acute immune dysfunction observed