An official website of the United States government.

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Next-Generation Smart Surfaces and Coatings to Improve Food Safety and Water-Efficiency of U.S. Specialty Crops

Objective

The main long-term objective of this project is to advance the current state-of-art microbiological safety of farming tools and accessories used in harvesting and equipment and food-contact surfaces used for storing, sorting, and processing of specialty crops through a novel, smart sanitary design. Another long-term goal is to improve the interfacial characteristics of these tools and surfaces to enable easier washing and sanitization that will significantly reduce amounts of water usage. The third long-term objective is to increase stakeholder awareness about our new technology that can improve food safety and water use efficiency at harvest or/and post-harvest stages of specialty crops. As part of these long-term goals, the project is organized into three research objectives and two outreach objectives:Objective 1: Develop novel spraying- and dipping-based formulations that are optimized for effectively and robustly inhibiting bacterial adhesion on selected polymer-, wood-, and metal-based surfaces commonly contacting with specialty crops during harvest and processing.Objective 2: Develop scalable processes that can be used for the permanent modification of metal and polymer harvest and postharvest tools and equipment with nanotextures during their manufacturing. Objective 3: Significantly reduce water usage in cleaning and sanitization of harvest and postharvest equipment, tools, and containers, and food-contact surfaces utilized in packing, sorting, and processing facilities via nanotechnology-based smart design.Objective 4: Disseminate information on the key features and potential benefits of our developed novel technologies to stakeholders in various modalities with a specific goal of maximizing the widespread utilization and adaptation of such technologies in the specialty-crop production, processing, and packing activities through extensive multi-state outreach efforts Objective 5: Prepare detailed, easy-to-follow instructions and interactive multimedia demonstrations explaining how specialty crop growers/processors can modify their existing tools and surfaces to incorporate functions of bacterial repellency and self-cleaning in them using spraying and dipping.

Investigators
Cisneros-Zevallos, Luis
Institution
Texas A&M University
Start date
2021
End date
2025
Project number
TEX09913
Accession number
1027514