At the end of May, a meeting of the partners of the EU project Ho-Food ‘Innovative high pressure process to increase the preservation of ready-to-eat Organic FOOD’ was held at the at the University of Padova, Italy. It was the closing meeting of the project which has been implemented since 2021 within the framework of the Susfood Eranet program.
The meeting was attended by the representatives of the Department of Fruit and Vegetable Product Technology – Professor Krystian Marszałek and Zhe Chen, M.Sc. The Department of Fruit and Vegetable Product Technology was in charge of the Ho-Food project implementation at IBPRS-PIB.
The overall goal of the project was to foster the whole fresh vegetable food chain via the development of a new food pasteurization technique, based on the use of high-pressure CO2 at low temperature, efficient to inactivate microorganisms and enzymes present on the surface and responsible for food spoilage.
The product will be pre-packed before undergoing the pasteurization process, thus avoiding the risk of post-process contamination.
By using low temperature (< 45°C), sensorial and chemical properties will be preserved, resulting in healthy and palatable food while preserving the phytochemical components of organic foods.
The beneficial impacts of the new technique are safety, shelf-life duration, higher nutritional value, sensorial profile and the potential to improve business and environmental sustainability.
