New device to keep fruit juice fresh Researchers have created a high-throughput prototype device to detect and track fungal contamination in fruit juice. Industrial Technologies © Thinkstock Recent research shows that up to 40 % of fruit juices are spoiled by fungal contamination. Current detection methods rely on visual identification, which is slow, expensive, and unable to detect low-level contamination or identify specific contaminant species. The EU-funded FUST (Source tracking and monitoring of mould contamination in food production) project addressed this problem by developing an automated system to rapidly identify contaminating fungal species at low cost. They used a technique called Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy for the analysis. FUST investigated, tested and chose various pieces of equipment to make up the finished system. These include plates for incubating moulds, incubators, sonicators, centrifuges and a liquid handling system. The team developed and validated an industrial protocol for rapid and accurate identification of fungal contaminants in juice. Researchers also designed an automated high-throughput system, with particular focus on automating the liquid handling process. The system can automate all the sample preparation steps, and it can process up to 96 samples at once. Researchers built a database to track the source of contamination, along with a simple user interface. FUST also created algorithms to identify a match between a sample and the database. The FUST prototype device offers a fully automated solution for contamination tracking and identification in fruit juices. In the long term, this will reduce the number of contamination events and allow the industry to be more competitive. Keywords Fruit juice, high-throughput, fungal contamination, FUST, mould, food production
