Purpose

Leafy vegetables may get contaminated with pathogens through the use of irrigation water during open field cultivation. The main control option to prevent this contamination is the use of disinfection technologies that will reduce the pathogenic load of the irrigation water. Several technologies, either chemical or physical, are available for disinfection, which were gathered from the literature and European Union (EU) projects. The purpose of this paper is to prioritise these technologies.

Design/methodology/approach

A feasibility study was performed to identify the most promising disinfection technology considering 12 different criteria. A two-tier approach was used in which the technologies were first evaluated based on three criteria: legal status, effectiveness and technology readiness level (TRL). Only the technologies that reached pre-set thresholds for these three criteria were then evaluated in the second tier.

Findings

The evaluation showed that the most promising technologies after the tier-2 evaluation were ultrasound, microfiltration, ultraviolet and ozone. The study showed that the followed approach enabled prioritising disinfection technologies allowing for selecting the most promising technologies that can be tested further on a possible application during primary production to prevent possible food safety issues in leafy vegetables.

Research limitations/implications

The overview is not an exhaustive list of disinfection technologies available rather only those technologies that seemed promising for application in horticulture were addressed. Some technologies may, thus, have been missed. Nevertheless, a total of 12 single and seven combined technologies were evaluated.

Originality/value

This is the first study that uses a structured approach to prioritise a broad range of possible water disinfection technologies for use at primary production.

中文翻译：

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优先采用水消毒技术，以提高带叶蔬菜的食品安全性

目的

在田间耕作期间，使用灌溉水可能会使叶类蔬菜被病原体污染。防止这种污染的主要控制方法是使用消毒技术，以减少灌溉用水的致病负荷。从文献和欧洲联盟（EU）项目中收集到的几种化学或物理技术均可用于消毒。本文的目的是优先考虑这些技术。

设计/方法/方法

考虑到12个不同的标准，进行了可行性研究，以确定最有前途的消毒技术。使用了两层方法，其中首先根据以下三个标准对技术进行评估：法律地位，有效性和技术准备水平（TRL）。然后，仅在第二层中评估达到这三个标准的预设阈值的技术。

发现

评估显示，经过二级评估后，最有前途的技术是超声，微滤，紫外线和臭氧。研究表明，采用以下方法可以优先考虑消毒技术，从而选择最有前途的技术，可以在初级生产期间对可能的应用进行进一步测试，以防止叶菜类蔬菜出现食品安全问题。

研究局限/意义

概述不是可用的消毒技术的详尽列表，而是仅解决了看起来有希望在园艺中应用的那些技术。因此，某些技术可能已被遗漏。然而，总共评估了12种单一技术和7种组合技术。

创意/价值

这是第一项使用结构化方法优先考虑用于初级生产的可能的水消毒技术的研究。