Produce-related projects among USDA food safety grants

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced funding awards totaling nearly $19 million, including more than $6.7 million for antimicrobial resistance strategies, to 36 grantees to ensure a safe and nutritious food supply and while maintaining American agricultural competitiveness. NIFA made the awards through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), which is authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.

NIFA made the awards through the AFRI Food Safety program to protect consumers from microbial and chemical contaminants that may occur in the food chain, from production to consumption.

This year, AFRI’s Food Safety program is comprised of five sub-programs. The following projects are related to fruit and vegetables.

Effective Mitigation Strategies for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

• Virginia Tech, $750,000  — Research ways to mitigate AMR contamination in raw produce by determining factors that contribute to the spread of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes, to include manure and soil types, composting techniques and more.
• Wake Forest University, $15,000 —  Organize the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Microbial Pathogenesis Meeting to foster communication and collaboration between scientists engaged in microbial pathogenesis research and give students and post-doctoral fellows an opportunity to present research to subject matter experts.

Enhancing Food Safety through Improved Processing Technologies

• University of Maine, $900,000 — Develop an integrated project among academia, government, industry partners and stakeholders to create effective waterless, non-thermal processing technologies to provide consumer with safe, nutritious, high-quality produce and low-moisture foods, equip Extension agents with knowledge and tools and facilitate commercialization of the technology and dissemination of information.
• University of California, Davis, $751,000  —  Characterize the risk of cross-contamination of fresh produce as a function of flow conditions in a washer and optimize washer design; develop innovative biosensing approaches; evaluate novel sanitizers technologies; engineer self-regenerating antimicrobial coatings to reduce risk of cross contamination.
•  University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff,  $149,000  —  Evaluate antimicrobial effects of bacteriopathogens in edible coatings in combination with natural antimicrobials against foodborne pathogens in ready-to-eat foods.

Identifying and Targeting Food Safety Needs

• Illinois Institute of Technology, $50,000 — Provides funding for a conference allowing researchers and subject matter experts to discuss the current status and issues associated with the management of food allergens and summarize and showcase the best practices in managing allergen risks at various stages of the food chain.

Improving Food Safety

• Cornell University, $499, 997  —  Execute a three-pronged, interdisciplinary, mechanistic approach involving engineering modeling, microfluids and microbiology validation to study active and passive attachment and internalization at produce surfaces during exposure to contaminated water during irrigation/washing, as well as passive infiltration into produce from hydro- and vacuum-cooling.
• University of South Florida, $499,972  —  Demonstrate improved detection of bacterial pathogens in processed lettuce using a novel dead-end ultrafiltration (DEUF) sampling procedure that rapidly collects, concentrates and recovers pathogens from large volumes of produce wash water in combination with an ACOC qPCR rapid detection method.
• Emory University, $499,968  —  Evaluate the potential for norovirus and hepatitis A viral contamination on fresh produce in the harvest and post-harvest environment and evaluate the impact of food safety practices on reducing contamination.
• University of California¸ Davis, $499,812  — Aims to greatly improve understanding of the internalization and survival mechanisms of two major food-poisoning human pathogenic bacteria in fresh produce and guiding development of innovative measure to reduce pathogen load in unprocessed leafy vegetables.
• Cornell University, $479,764  —  Examine the significance of water films and droplets on the initial retention and attachment of foodborne pathogens to the surface of fresh produce and explore potential steps to modify conditions of the initial attachment process so that pathogens can be washed off more easily.
• University of Massachusetts, $499,567  — Investigate interactions between silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and leafy vegetables using surface-enhanced Roman spectroscopic mapping to understand the physical and molecular mechanism that contribute to AgNPs contaminating fresh produce.
• University of Hawaii, $499,516  —  Explore the adhesion mechanics of bacteria on multifunctional nanopillared surfaces and ultimately develop an anti-bacterial surface that is environmentally acceptable, energy-efficient and economically feasible in the area of food contact surfaces associated with fresh produce production and/or processing.
•  University of Maine, $150,000  —  Develop a non-invasive method using magnetic resonance imaging to improve the understanding of the internalization of foodborne pathogens in produce.
• University of Nevada-Reno, $150,000  —  Analyze the impact of aromatic carbon-degrading microorganisms on the transformation, aqueous stability, and tomato plant uptake of carbon nanotubes.
• North Dakota State University, $135,343 —  Provide a comprehensive assessment of preharvest and postharvest environmental factors that influence expression of pathogen attachment mechanisms, and thereby attachment of pathogens to different surfaces, such as fresh produce and stainless steel.
• Ohio State University, $50,000  —  Foster scientific collaboration, information exchange and dissemination on multiple aspects of the detection, diagnosis, prevention, control, mitigation, and treatment of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.
•  North Dakota State University, $36,996  — Enhance the research capability of university researchers through the measurement of zeta potential, molecular weight of biological particles, and particle size, particularly nanoparticles, through a procured Zetasizer and use these measurement in research pertaining to nanoparticle and food crop interactions.

Improving Food Quality

• University of Illinois, $499,966  —  Develop the Hybrid Mixture Theory based three-scale fluid and species transport model describing mechanisms and thermomechanical changes in frozen foods, obtain mathematical parameters and solve the model using the finite element method, and validate predictions of the model.
• University of Florida, $499,652  —  Explore the process of changing tomato and strawberry volatile profiles predictably and how narrow-bandwidth LED illumination influences other important postharvest attributes and overall shelf life.
• University of Idaho, $248,408  —  Improve understanding of the interaction between saliva with food components and how it affects perceived food texture using rheological, tribological and sensory measurements, model systems (stirred acid milk gels) to evaluate in terms of these behaviors.
• University of Maine, $46,293  — Utilize an ultra-pressure liquid chromatographer system to assist with food quality research of fruits and vegetables and food safety research of vegetables and syrup.

A complete list of this year’s project descriptions is available on the NIFA website.