The Center for Produce Safety (CPS) ¬has funded 12 new research projects, valued at just over $3.9 million, to help answer the industry’s most urgent produce food safety questions.
The topics included in the 12 projects are risk evaluation and mitigation of Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella, Cyclospora control, and sanitation for harvesting bins and picking bags. A complete list is provided below, with links to project abstracts. From leafy greens to tree fruit to onions, the research has been vetted by industry experts on the CPS Technical Committee and is ready to begin in January 2022.
“CPS thanks our Campaign contributors and the Specialty Crop Block Grant Programs in California, Florida, Texas, and Washington for their commitment to food safety,” said Vic Smith, chair of CPS’s volunteer Board of Directors and CEO of grower-shipper J.V. Smith Companies. “CPS succeeds because of our very unique community—the contributors funding our work, the researchers answering our questions, the Technical Committee guiding them, and the Board of Directors that keeps us all focused on the mission: Fund the Science, Find Solutions, and Fuel the Change.”
Joy Waite-Cusic, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Oregon State University, is leading one of two CPS-funded onion research projects. Waite-Cusic stated, “Dry bulb onions have generally been considered a low-risk crop, but then the 2020 outbreak happened in the United States and, more recently, an outbreak associated with onions from Mexico. The US outbreak investigation failed to identify the cause of Salmonella contamination. Our CPS project is designed to evaluate how specific industry practices, including water and clay applications, may contribute to widespread contamination and that could result in an outbreak.”
First-time CPS-funded scientist, Kansas State University Associate Professor Valentina Trinetta, Ph.D., shared, “Our research aims to develop science-based recommendations that will help improve cleaning and sanitation practices for harvesting operations while managing food safety risks tied to the sanitation of picking bags and harvesting bins for the tree fruit industry. Our team is excited to get started!”
All projects will begin in January 2022. Findings will be reported to the industry by researchers at CPS’s annual Research Symposium and via CPS through other knowledge transfer activities, including CPS’s website.
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.
2021 RFP Grant Recipients
All projects will begin in January 2022
- Teresa Bergholz, Ph.D., Michigan State University: Quantifying risk associated with changes in EHEC physiology during post-harvest pre-processing stages of leafy green production;
- Kerry Cooper, Ph.D., The University of Arizona: Microbial characterization of irrigation waters using rapid, inexpensive and portable next generation sequencing technologies;
- Paul Dawson, Ph.D., Clemson University: Survival of Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella on surfaces found in the dry packinghouse environment and effectiveness of dry-cleaning processes on pathogen reduction;
- Vijay Joshi, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research: Strategic approaches to mitigate Salmonella contamination of bulb onions ;
- Daniel Karp, Ph.D., University of California, Davis: Towards a holistic assessment of the food-safety risks imposed by wild birds;
- Nitin Nitin, Ph.D., University of California, Davis: Cross-contamination risks in dry environments;
- Xiangwu Nou, Ph.D., USDA-ARS, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center: Assessing Romaine lettuce “Forward Processing” for potential impacts on EHEC growth, antimicrobial susceptibility, and infectivity:
- Benjamin Rosenthal, S.D., USDA-ARS, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center : AFECCT: Assessing filtration efficacy for Cyclospora control;
- Abigail Snyder, Ph.D., Cornell University: Practical application of superheated steam to harvesting, processing, and produce packing tools and equipment;
- Lia Stanciu-Gregory, Ph.D., Purdue University: Cyclospora cayetanensis monitoring in agricultural water;
- Valentina Trinetta, Ph.D., Kansas State University: Validation study for the tree-fruit industry: effective strategies to sanitize harvest bins and picking bags;
- Joy Waite-Cusic, Ph.D., Oregon State University: and Assessing the potential for production practices to impact dry bulb onion safety.
All annual research awards can be found on the Funded Research Projects page on the CPS website
