WOODLAND, CA - The Center for Produce Safety (CPS) has funded two vital studies digging into diverse foodborne outbreak causal agents with the goal of helping fresh producers reduce risk.

The first, “Optimizing methods for the detection and quantification of infectious human norovirus from fresh berries using human intestinal enteroids,” is led by the University of Georgia’s Malak Esseili, Ph.D. with co-investigator Issmat Kassem, Ph.D. As a press release explained, the CPS-funded study hopes to enlist new technology to optimize the FDA’s detection method and then use it to determine infectious norovirus persistence in stored berries. The study aims to provide suppliers with better testing tools as well as shed light on the potential risk of infectious norovirus in stored berries. Esseili and her team will examine different methods to dislodge more pathogens from berry samples and different buffers to more efficiently recover them, in addition to exploring different ways to concentrate viruses from berry samples.

In addition, the team will inoculate berries with known quantities of human norovirus and hepatitis A virus and incubate them at 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) in the laboratory, mimicking post-harvest storage, the release noted.

“In our case, we’ll actually put the viruses on the berries, knowing how many we put, and we want to recover as much as we can,” Esseili stated. “Because the enteroids are very expensive to maintain, we’ll optimize our method using surrogate viruses. Once we’re happy with that, then we’ll couple the method with the enteroids. We want to answer if you detect this much virus genetic material on berries, does it mean you’re detecting this much infectious virus.”

The second study is led by Channah Rock, Ph.D., with the University of Arizona, and is focused on filling in data gaps and helping the industry better understand the potential added benefits of irrigation water treatment. Overall, “Microbiological risk assessment using QMRA in preharvest agriculture water treatment systems for leafy greens” aims to guide the development of a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QRMA) the industry could use to gauge potential pathogen risk reduction from treated water applied preharvest.

“We’re really trying to capture new data that hasn’t been shared,” explained Rock. “What we’re seeing is water treatment does, in fact, reduce bacteria on plant tissue, leaf surfaces, and the soil. But it seems to be very dependent on how that contamination entered the field.”

Learn more about these game-changing studies during the 2024 CPS Research Symposium.

And for more industry insights, stay on the pages of ANUK.