The Produce Marketing Association is offering a free webinar to members and non-members titled, “Nanobubbles: New pop for improved produce safety.” The webinar is set for 4 p.m. EDT on July 16.

The webinar will be moderated by PMA’s Trevor Suslow. Invited nanobubble experts will cover a lay-technical background on nanobubble generation, novel properties, and insights to current research and practical applications for the produce industry.

PMA’s registration site explains how microbubbles, gaseous cavities formed in a liquid, have been used for ultrasonic cleaning under numerous applications for decades. This process has been studied extensively for removal of biofilms and acoustic-carbonic acid microbubble killing of microbes, according to the Produce Marketing Association (PMA). However, this process has seen little commercial use in fresh produce. But now, nanobubble technology is seemingly transforming this approach as this ultra-fine cavitation has truly unique properties in breaking attachments at interfaces and holding antimicrobial gases, such as ozone, in solution at surprising concentrations and for greatly extended durations.

“More recently, nanobubble technology (aka ultrafine bubbles) has intrigued the research and applications communities, including the produce world,” Suslow told Food Safety News.

“A nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter, or 0.00000004th, of an inch. A typical E. coli or Salmonella cell is about 1,000 nanometers in size, so a leaf surface aggregate colony would present a large surface area for nanobubbles to do their work. Nanobubbles do not readily coalesce and therefore, combined with other unique surface charge and related properties, stay in solution and don’t rise to the surface and burst.”

In the webinar Suslow will be joined by Yan Jin of the University of Delaware and Alex Athey, CEO of En Solución, to cover a lay-technical background on interfacial and produce surface boundary forces, nanobubble generation, their novel properties and insights on current research and practical applications for our industry.

Suslow is vice president of produce safety at PMA and is also an Emeritus Extension research specialist at the University of California-Davis, Department of Plant Sciences. Most recently, he was recognized by the International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) with the 2018 Elmer Marth educator Award and the 2019 IAFP President’s Award for extension and outreach to the food safety community.

The Produce Marketing Association is a trade organization representing companies from every segment of the global fresh produce and floral supply chain. PMA helps members grow by providing connections that expand business opportunities and increase sales and consumption.