Luksiene, ZivilePaskeviciute, EgleNunes, Carla2013-09-272013-09-272010http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/2923Proceedings of the International Conference “Environmentally friendly and safe technologies for quality of fruit and vegetables”, held in Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal, on January 14-16, 2009. This Conference was a join activity with COST Action 924.This study deals with the development of a novel approach to decontaminate packaging from food pathogens by photosensitization. For this purpose, packaging samples with adhered pathogen were submerged in aminolevulinic acid (ALA solution (3-7.5 mM) for 10 min. Samples were then illuminated with 20 mW cm-2 ( =400 nm) for 5-20 min up to the total exposure of 24 J cm-2. Gram-positive Bacillus cereus and Gramnegative Salmonella enterica were inactivated, with population reductions of 4.2 and 2.5 log, respectively. Inactivation of Gram-positive Listeria monocytogenes biofilms ranged from 1.7-3.1 log. Moreover, our data indicated that the B. cereus spores were susceptible to this treatment, with as much as a 3.1 log reduction in spore population observed after ALA-based photosensitization in vitro and 2.7 log on the surface of packaging material.engbook part