Progress 05/01/23 to 04/30/24
Outputs
Target Audience:The possible target audience for this project are: Undergraduate and graduate students in food and nutritional science program, College of Agricultural sciences students and our university students. Scientists, faculty and students in the College of Agricultural sciences/university. Food scientists, and the food industry in general. Food scientists around the world who work with food industry and food safety related fields. The Government agencies such as FDA, USDA DHS and other related fields Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our students can learn about new practical approach to prevent the spread for viruses in the working environment. The students applied the knowledge in the food service operation to ensure safe working environments and ways to improve quality of food industry. Our students and the scientists attended the local and state food safety conferences and learn about new approaches to prevent the spread of the viruses in the work environment. All the research team attended several national conferences including the national IFT, ACS, ASM and ADSA conferences and attended workshop related to COVID-19 in the food industry. In addition, we attended workshop at NCSU related to food safety. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? The team would like to complete objectives 1-3 during the coming year and make sure we have a successful project. There will be few manuscripts to submit for publications,one master student will complete the thesis from this project.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The food industry including the meat industry (poultry, pork and beef) has hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of our project is to obtain valuable information necessary to make recommendations on how to mitigate the spread of airborne viruses in food industry facilities in the event of a future airborne virus pandemic. In this project, we have 3 objectives: Establish an AVT laboratory model capable of simulating AVT in the food industry. Enhance the FNSP curriculum to incorporate content about the AVT Translate research findings into best practices recommendations and disseminate recommendations Since our building Carver Hall is under continuous construction, our team worked closely with our collaborators from North Carolina State university and Wake Forest University to complete the objectives of the project. In objective 1, we worked on the development of practical methods for the isolation and quantification of the aerosolized bacteriophage. During this year, the team established the bacteriophage protocol that allows for quantification of the virus in the laboratory environment. It took the team more than 16 months to validate the procedure and obtain more accurate data. This procedure will be used with different bacteriophages and under different temperatures and air quality. In objective 2: the team have already established 4 lectures and 2 laboratory demonstrations for FCS 440 food microbiology and biotechnology course and FCS 346 Food safety and sanitation. We plan to include these lectures in other food science courses including FCS 637 special problem in food and nutritional science and FCS 641 food protection and defense. In objective 3: our team is working with our collaborator at NCSU to provide recommendations and disseminate the finding of our results.
Publications
|
Progress 05/01/22 to 04/30/23
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audience are: Undergraduate and graduate students in food and nutritional science program at NC A&TSU; Scientists and faculty members in the CAES NC A&TSU in addition to other scientists in food sciences programs; Food scientists working in industry or government agencies; Public health inspectors Changes/Problems:This project has faced serious challenges since we started this project. Our building in Carver Hall is not suitable to conduct the required research. In addition, we have been trying to hire a scientist to work on the project but faced several challenges from HR to post the position. However, with the support from the food industry and other academic institutions, we were able to start the first objective recently, our colleagues at Wake Forst worked with our team on the development of the techniques to start the project. We are now working on the development of educational materials and several laboratory exercises to train high school students and teachers in food science. We also started to use some of these exercises in food science courses, food safety in spring 2023 and food microbiology in fall 2023. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Due to the nature of the project and the high risk of the virus involved, most of the activities involved only Salam Ibrahim and Tahl Zimmerman and our collaborators from Wake Forest and NCSU. We regularly attend the Food safety task force and learn about up-to-date information related to this project. We also attend American society for microbiology conference last summer and presented one poster. We plan to involve students in this project during the year 2024-2025 after all laboratory preparation is completed. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Three research manuscripts are under review and one review article is accepted. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our team plans to complete objectives 1 and 2 by the end of summer 2024. 1) Establish an AVT laboratory model capable of simulating AVT in food industry settings. 2) Enhance the FNSP curriculum to incorporate content about AVT. Next month, we plan to visit high school in High point and Thomasville, NC to conduct training and provide educational materials as part of the curriculum development to incorporate content related to AVT.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Development of methods for the isolation and quantification of aerosolized bacteriophage phi6 Objective Work during this initial period focused on developing protocols for the isolation and quantitation of bacteriophage phi6 that could be translated into robust standard operating procedures for use by students at NC A&T. Work during this period was conducted by Jordan Fitzgerald (part-time lab tech) and Christian Mobely, NC A&T student who secured a summer fellowship for this work. Dr. Ornelles supervised all phases of the work. The primary focus of this first phase was to establish appropriate conditions for the growth and management of the bacterial host Pseudomonas syringae (Psy) and to initiate methods appropriate for the analysis of Phi6. Milestones Isolation and growth of Psy Two formulations of Tryptic Soy Broth were evaluated for their capacity to support the growth of Psy. Both complete formulations were adequate and identical. The fundamental techniques developed during this period included: (1) the preparation of liquid and solid bacterial media, (2) comparison of streaking, pouring, and spreading methods to isolate bacteria, (3) small scale and large scale liquid Psy cultures, and (4) procedures to freeze and recover frozen stocks of Psy. This work established approximate growth kinetics for the bacteria and found that the growth rate varies appreciably between 26°C and 22°C. Although natural room temperature is appropriate, a simple incubator to maintain a constant temperature may ensure more reproducible conditions. Analysis of Psy growth Key methods to analyze the growth of Psy were tested. These methods included: (1) colony counting from digital images and the use of the imaging software ImageJ to reduce operator error and extend the valid counting range, (2) the use of optical density to count bacteria, (3) correlated growth curves to define lag, exponential and saturation phase of liquid cultures. The growth of Psy near saturation was found to exhibit a curious decline in viable cells with no decline in optical density. More work is needed to define the growth properties. Isolation and enumeration of phi6 Another significant part of the effort in this period was to develop a simple and reproducible means of forming phi6 plaques on monolayer cultures of Psy. The use of a simple heat block and hot water bath proved to be the ideal means of forming "double agar layer" plates for plaque formation. Plaques were successfully formed, enumerated and used to isolate Phi6. Conditions needed to obtain the optimal density of Psy in culture that are then used to form the ideal bacterial lawn needs further development. The inclusion of the antimicrobials cetrimide, fusidic acid, and cepalothin (CFC) to select against adventitious microorganisms requires further tests. Preliminary studies show that although Psy is resistant to CFC, bacterial growth (and plaque-formation) in the presence of these agents is impaired.
Publications
|
|