Oct 6, 2020

CPS funds 14 new research projects to answer urgent produce safety questions

The Center for Produce Safety (CPS) ­has funded 14 new research projects, valued at just over $3.3 million, to help answer the industry’s most urgent produce food safety questions.

The 14 funded projects address pressing industry science needs by supply chain sector, including evaluating the role of dust in transferring foodboorne pathogens, inactivation of Cyclospora, and answer critical knowledge gaps regarding the survival of infectious virus in surface water.

“CPS’s work continues through the COVID-19 pandemic because all of us in the fresh produce industry can never take our eyes off of our shared responsibility to enhance produce safety,” said Vic Smith, chair of CPS’s volunteer Board of Directors and CEO of grower-shipper J.V. Smith Companies. “We appreciate our research community’s commitment to helping CPS achieve its mission to fund science, find solutions and fuel produce safety change across the supply chain.”

All projects will begin in January 2021. Findings will be reported to industry by researchers at CPS’s annual Research Symposium, and via CPS through other knowledge transfer activities including CPS’s website.

Scott Lenaghan, Ph.D., of the University of Tennessee is a first-time award recipient for his project, “Determination of physical and chemical mechanisms to prevent Cyclospora infection.” 

“Given the increase in Cyclospora outbreaks, coupled with CPS’s work demonstrating the prevalence of this pathogen in our domestic water supply, to enhance produce safety it is now time to focus on effective means to inactivate Cyclospora,” said Lenaghan.”We will evaluate use of state-of-the-art robotics and image processing to automate screening to validate that Cyclospora has been inactivated, removing the current barrier of laborious manual analysis. The outcome of the project will be valuable guidance to industry on a well-characterized method for inactivating Cyclospora.”

Luxin Wang, Ph.D., University of California-Davis, received a first-time award for her proposal, “Waxing of whole produce and its involvement in and impact on microbial food safety.” 

“Limited information is available about the impact of waxing on the microbial food safety of fresh produce,” Wang said. “We will investigate the survival of common foodborne pathogens, Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes, in waxes, and evaluate the microbiological impact of applying and heat drying waxes. Our goal is to provide data the fresh produce industry needs to conduct risk assessments of their waxing steps.”

CPS research awards are made possible by funds provided by the Center for Produce Safety’s Campaign Contributors, the Specialty Crop Block Grant programs in California Department of Food and Agriculture, Washington State Department of Agriculture, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and Texas Department of Agriculture.