Fungal contamination is a concern for the food industry. Fungal spores resist food sterilization treatments and produce mycotoxins that are toxic for animals and humans. Technologies that deactivate spores and toxins without impacting food quality are desirable. This study demonstrates the efficiency of a high voltage atmospheric cold plasma (HVACP) technology using air to generate reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen (RNS) species for the degradation of Aspergillus flavus cultures and the deoxynivalenol (DON) mycotoxin. Optical emission and absorption spectroscopy demonstrate ionization of hydroxyl groups, atomic oxygen and nitrogen, and confirm production of ROS and RNS, e.g. O₃, NO₂, NO₃, N₂O₄, and N₂O₅. Fungal cultures show a depletion in pigmentation and an ∼50% spore inactivation after 1-min treatments. Treated spores show surface ablation and membrane degradation by scanning electron microscopy. Twenty-minute direct HVACP treatments of 100 μg of DON in one mL aqueous suspensions resulted in a greater than 99% reduction in DON structure and rescued over 80% of Caco-2 cell viability; however, the same treatment on 100 μg of powdered DON toxin only showed a 33% reduction in DON and only rescued 15% of cell viability. In summary, HVACP air treatment can inactivate both fungal spores and toxins in minutes.

真菌污染是食品工业关注的问题。真菌孢子抵抗食物杀菌处理，并产生对动物和人类有毒的霉菌毒素。希望使孢子和毒素失活而不影响食品质量的技术。这项研究证明了高压空气冷等离子体（HVACP）技术的效率，该技术利用空气产生活性氧（ROS）和氮（RNS）物质，以降解黄曲霉培养物和脱氧雪茄烯醇（DON）霉菌毒素。光学发射和吸收光谱证明了羟基，原子氧和氮的电离，并证实了ROS和RNS的产生，例如。O ₃，NO ₂，NO ₃，N ₂O ₄和N ₂ O ₅。处理1分钟后，真菌培养物的色素沉着减少，孢子失活约50％。通过扫描电子显微镜观察，处理过的孢子表现出表面烧蚀和膜降解。在20 mL直接HVACP处理中，将100μgDON置于1 mL水性悬浮液中，导致DON结构降低超过99％，并挽救了80％的Caco-2细胞活力；但是，对100μg的DON粉末毒素进行的相同处理仅显示DON降低了33％，仅挽救了15％的细胞活力。总之，HVACP空气处理可以在几分钟内使真菌孢子和毒素灭活。