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Keywords
Pulsed light
Ultraviolet light
Broad spectrum white light
Abstract
With the increase in consumer awareness, demand for minimally processed foods and ecofriendliness, various technologies were developed for food processing and preservation. The conventional thermal food preservation and processing techniques appears to have the shortcoming of adversely affecting the food quality, organoleptic properties and nutrients. However, many non-thermal food preservation technologies were developed to serve the purpose. Many of such technologies are active packaging, pulsed electric field processing, high pressure processing, ultraviolet light processing and pulsed light processing. Pulsed light technology appears to be one of the best alternatives to conventional thermal and chemical decontamination process. Pulsed light processing technique has been commercialized and there have been many reports on the wide spectrum application of this technology. The technology not only decontaminates the food or packaging but also maintains its texture, nutrients etc. The germicidal effect was found to be due to photochemical and photothermal effect. It also has many other applications apart from decontamination, one such being reducing the allergen potent of some naturally occurring foods. The following review article is a compilation of reports on the mechanism of action of the technology and recent application of pulsed light processing.
Introduction
The technique of pulsed light food processing was developed as a non-thermal food processing technique, that involves discharge of high voltage electric pulses (upto 70 Kilovolt/cm) into the food product placed between two electrodes for few seconds (Angersbach et al., 2000). It is one of the emerging technologies which are used for the replacement of traditional thermal pasteurization among non thermal processes (Heinz et al., 2002). It is a decontamination technique which aims at reducing the pests, spoilage microorganisms and pathogens from food without much effect on its quality (Bank et al., 1990). It is recognized by several names in scientific literature i.e., Pulsed ultraviolet light (Sharma and Demirci, 2003), high intensity broad-spectrum pulsed light (Roberts and Hope, 2003), Pulsed light (Rowan et al., 1999) and pulsed white light (Marquenie et al., 2003).
The pulsed light processing can be described as a sterilization or decontamination technique used mainly to inactivate surface micro-organisms on foods, packaging material and equipments. This technique uses light energy in concentrated form and exposes the substrate to intense...