Elsevier

Food Chemistry Advances

Volume 2, October 2023, 100249
Food Chemistry Advances

Recent trends in non-thermal plasma and plasma activated water: Effect on quality attributes, mechanism of interaction and potential application in food & agriculture

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.focha.2023.100249Get rights and content
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open access

Highlights

  • NTP and PAW was found to be effective non thermal techniques in food industries.

  • The fundamentals of various plasma generating systems were explored.

  • Reactive species altered organoleptic and sensory characteristics.

  • The mechanisms of plasma's interactions with food constituents were addressed.

  • PAW and NTP applications in food processing were discussed.

Abstract

The awareness of this era in consuming safe, nutritional, and minimally processed food is growing continuously. In order to address all of these consumer expectations, the food industry has adopted innovative non-thermal processes. Non-thermal plasma is an innovative non-thermal approach with the potential to offer safe and stable food while maintaining its nutritional and sensory attributes. This article discusses the general applications of non-thermal plasma in the food industry. It explores the fundamentals of non-thermal plasma generating systems. It also emphasizes the mechanism of plasma's interaction with microbial decontamination, enzyme inactivation, polyphenol compounds, and physicochemical attributes of food materials. This study also highlights published findings regarding the application of plasma towards the decontamination of various food items and packaging materials, along with its impact on various food quality attributes. In addition, non-thermal plasma applied to water produces plasma-activated water. The mechanism of plasma-activated water formation and its implications in food disinfection, seed germination, and plant growth are explored. Additionally, the authors have reviewed the influence of plasma-activated water on several food aspects. Future studies are required to utilize this technique and scale up for commercial production effectively.

Keywords

Non-thermal plasma
Enzyme inactivation
Microbial decontamination
Plasma-activated water

Data availability

  • No data was used for the research described in the article.

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