Postharvest Reduction of 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 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% (/) organic load. PEL performed statistically the same ( ≤ 0.05) at both 30 mM and 50 mM concentrations and resulted in greater than 1, 5 and 6 log CFU/g 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 ( ≤ 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 ( ≤ 0.05). While PEL sanitizers effectively reduced inoculated and subsequent transfer to uninoculated tomatoes, reformulation may be necessary to prevent deleterious quality impacts on produce.