As consumers strive to eat healthy diets, they show an increasing demand for uncooked and minimally processed vegetables preferentially from organic production lines. At the same time, outbreaks of disease have been traced back to the consumption of fresh plant produce contaminated with enteric pathogens. PathOrganic addresses the quality and safety of organically produced vegetables throughout the production chain. The project’s main concern is the contamination of fresh plant produce with bacterial pathogens. Thus, it examines how factors such as environment, plant genotype, fertilizer application technique or soil buffering affect pathogen spread and persistence in organic vegetable products.
As consumers strive to eat healthy diets, they show an increasing demand for uncooked and minimally processed vegetables preferentially from organic production lines. At the same time, outbreaks of disease have been traced back to the consumption of fresh.