Ozone Reduces Fungal Spoilage

Slowly but surely it is becomingknown that ozone at fairly safe levels, but still needing care in handling willkill the spores of molds and allow far greater shelf life.  I personally have quite a bit of knowledge asI was involved with an application in building remediation.

The corollary however is thatproducing pure ozone is fairly slow because it must not be done using a plasmaarc as most promoters attempt.  Theplasma arc produces a little ozone and a lot of nitric acid which will likelydestroy anything you want to work with. We produced a special tube that did thejob.

I hope that sooner or later,clean ozone will becomes the standard for ant fungal and anti bacterialprotocols.

Ozone reduces fungal spoilage of fruits and vegetables

By BenCoxworth

20:26 April 12, 2011

http://www.gizmag.com/ozone-fungal-spoilage-fruits-vegetables/18377/

We've all done it – thrown out fruit or vegetables because they wentrotten. Fungal contamination is the most common cause of spoilage of freshproduce, with an estimated 30 percent of harvested fruit and veggies fallingvictim to it. Countermeasures currently including synthetic fungicides andpre-package sanitation treatments involving the use of chlorine or bromine. Nowa team of scientists from Britain'sNewcastle University have discovered that muchmore effective and human-friendly results can be obtained by treating producewith ozone.

Led by microbiologist Dr. Ian Singleton and plant biologist Prof. JerryBarnes, theNewcastle researchers experimented with storing freshfruit such as strawberries, tomatoes, grapes and plums in an environment thatcontained low levels of gaseous ozone. Not only was the production of fungalspores substantially reduced, but lesions on already-infected fruit became lessvisible. After eight days in the environment, the produce showed almost 95percent less spoilage than would otherwise have occurred – depending on thespecific fruit and pre-existing levels of infection.

It was also found that tomatoes exposed to ozone became morefungus-resistant, even once they were removed from the ozone gas.Exposed tomatoes were 60 percent less likely to develop fungal lesions,potentially boosting their shelf life by two to five days. While the scientistscan't explain exactly what forces are at work behind the reaction, they suggestthat some sort of memory- or vaccination-like effect is likely taking place.They are now looking into the specific amounts of ozone and lengths of exposurethat work best for individual types of fruit and vegetables, as too much ozonecan also cause spoilage.

"There are public concerns over pesticide residues on freshproduce" said Singleton. "Ozone is a viable alternative to pesticidesas it is safe to use and effective against a wide spectrum of micro-organisms.Importantly, it leaves no detectable residues in contrast to traditionalmethods of preserving fresh produce."

In the case of the tomatoes, the amounts of ozone involved were said tobe similar to those which the fruit would be exposed to outside on a sunny day.

The research was recently presented at the Society for GeneralMicrobiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate, England.