Food science student's apple-picking bag research aims to keep fresh produce safe from E. coli

I'm currently working on determining the survival of generic E. Coli on tree fruit picking bags and inflammation from this project will be used to provide recommendations on sanitation interventions on tree fruit picking bags to farmers in Virginia. Hi, I'm surreal. I hope I'm a PhD student at the Department of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech. We are doing this study because they turn on the survival of microbiota into KGOS on tree fruit picking bags is lacking. And these microbiota indicators are important to assess cleanliness. When we talk about things AT, It's important that these bags I sanitize because maybe in the cost of habits produced that was contaminated, eagle-eyed was putting that back and subsequent produced that is harvested and putting that back might be contaminated with E. Coli. We are currently working with four different material types of tree for picking bags. And we cut those bags into five-by-five centimeter coupons. We sterilize them by UV light and we inoculate them with rifampicin resistant generic E coli. We allow them to dry in a biosafety cabinet. And then we store them at 22 degrees Celsius and 30% relative humidity and run our analysis at different time points. This information will benefit the produce industry because it would allow the produce industry or stakeholders in the produce industry to know what kinds of a material types you might want to minimize. Wendy up picking out, picking bags. And it would also allow them to better assess what kind of sanitation interventions they use for a certain kind of material type of preferred thinking back, yeah, It is important that fresh produce now become contaminated because some produce like apples, and I'll cook before eating. So if we can prevent this contamination from the start, then we can keep fresh produce safe to eat.