Microbial Decontamination of Bee Pollen by Direct Ozone Exposure

Foods

Juan Ramón Cabello¹  Inmaculada Rodríguez¹  Salud Serrano¹  José Manuel Flores²  Ana Isabel García-Valcárcel³  María Dolores Hernando³ 

[1] Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain;Department of Zoology, University of Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain;National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA), 28040 Madrid, Spain;

关键词: bee pollen;    ozone;    microbial decontamination;    polyphenols;    sensory analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/foods10112593

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The bee pollen is a complete and healthy food with important nutritional properties. Usually, bee pollen is consumed dehydrated, but it is possible to market it as fresh frozen pollen, favoring the maintenance of its properties and greatly increasing its palatability, compared to dried pollen. However, fresh frozen pollen maintains a high microbiological load that can include some pathogenic genus to human health. In this work, ozonation combined with drying is applied to reduce the microbiological load. The lowest timing exposure to ozone (30 min) was chosen together with hot-air drying during 15 min to evaluate the shelf-life of treated bee-pollen under cold storage (4 °C), and initial reductions of 3, 1.5, and 1.7 log cycles were obtained for Enterobacteriaceae, mesophilic aerobes, and molds and yeasts counting, respectively. Six weeks after treatment the microbial load was held at a lower level than initially observed in fresh bee-pollen. In addition, ozone treatment did not have a negative impact on the polyphenols evaluated. Likewise, the sensory profile of the bee pollen under different treatments was studied. For all these assays the results have been favorable, so we can say that ozonation of fresh pollen is safe for human consumption, which maintains its polyphenols composition and organoleptically is better valued than dried pollen.

【 授权许可】

Unknown