Nonthermal Plasma for Food Quality and Safety

Although the microbicidal e€ects of nonthermal plasma (NTP-the cold ionised gas) were reported more than ‰fteen years ago, we are still waiting for its wider application in practice. ough there are lots of published scienti‰c papers describing the reduction and inactivation of pathogenic microorganisms (e.g., bacteria and spores) byNTP exercisable in microbiology, in medicine for disinfection of thermolabil instruments and therapy of infections, and in food processing for microbial decontamination of food or production components, their application in practice is still not generally accepted. Nevertheless, it seems the ‰nal step of apparatus upscaling and application in practice should become directly. NTP technology is useable above all in the food industry. NTP can inactivate decontaminated surfaces of various food products and semi‰nished food products, yet the e€ect is relatively gentle on surfaces being decontaminated. NTP provides su‹cient e‹ciency accompanied by minimal damage and minimal impact on the quality of processed foods or thermosensitive packagingmaterials.us far, it appears that, at least in some cases, there is minimal damage of antioxidants in food, and the content of substance residues is minimized after the plasma treatment. It is a usable e€ect that NTP may start better germination and early growth in many agricultural crop seeds. By our experience from the food and agriculture industry, one of the main reasons may be the skepticism of producers about the e€ectivity and suitability of NTP and also their unfamiliarity. Nowadays, when the knowledge of NTP e€ects is general in the scienti‰c area, our next big deal is to present and propagate the potential of NTP to the public community. is special issue proposes to collect a set of several interesting works to catch the attention of potential applicants. is issue includes ‰ve original papers and one review. e ‰rst three papers con‰rm the potential of NTP to decrease the number of food micro’ora together with the analysis of the quality of treated food. e various food samples they used are both perishable ones such as chicken meat and onion and durable ones such as rice. e next article together also with the previous ones pays attention to the food quality a€ection by NTP. e paper presents the study about their in’uence on both physical and chemical properties such as color, content of antioxidants, fatty acids, protein, sugar, thermodynamic properties, solubility, and pH. e last but one article addresses the not yet well-known fact of food functionality a€ection by NTP presented on cereal ’our and dough properties. As a ‰nal article, we o€er our review summarizing the results of several studies of NTP treatment of wheat grains as one of the world’s most important nutritive. We focus mainly on the possible e€ects of NTP on wheat rather than on the detailed description of plasma generation and other treatments. Details and description of the plasma e€ect begin at the surface of wheat grains and continue stepwise through the growth characteristics, metabolisms, and matured plants to the ’our as the ‰nal food product. We hope that this special issue contributes to familiarize the awareness of NTP features suitable for food industry and that the gentle reader ‰nds it interesting. We wish you a pleasant reading.