Journal
JOURNAL OF FOOD PROTECTION
Volume 76, Issue 1, Pages 26-32Publisher
INT ASSOC FOOD PROTECTION
DOI: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-11-509
Keywords
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Funding
- USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, National Integrated Food Safety Initiative (USDA-NIFA-NIFSI) [2011-51110-30994]
- CONACyT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Mexico)
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Salmonellosis outbreaks related to consumption of raw almonds have encouraged the scientific community to study the inactivation kinetics of pathogens in this dry commodity. However, the low moisture content of the product presents a challenge for thermal control, because the time required to achieve the desired thermal inactivation of microorganisms increases sharply with reduced moisture content and water activity. In this study, we explored and modeled the heat inactivation of Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis PT 30 in almond cultivar 'Nonpareil' kernel flour at four water activity (a(w)) values (0.601, 0.720, 0.888, and 0.946) using four temperatures for each a(w). The results showed that the inactivation was well fitted by both Weibull distribution (R-2 = 0.93 to 1.00) and first-order kinetics (R-2 = 0.82 to 0.96). At higher a(w) values, the rate of inactivation increased and less time was needed to achieve the required population reduction. These results suggest that, to avoid deterioration of product quality, shorter process times at lower temperatures may be used to achieve desired inactivation levels of Salmonella Enteritidis PT 30 by simply increasing the moisture content of almonds. These goals could be achieved with the use of existing procedures already practiced by the food industry, such as washing or prewetting scalding before heat inactivation.
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