Ozone Nanobubble Treatment of Open Water Irrigation Sources for Improved Food Safety and Plant Health

食品和药物管理局（FDA）寻求解决食源性疾病的问题， 通过对《食品安全法》的拟议修订， 安全现代化法案（FSMA）产生安全规则。规则的改变解决了威胁， 食源性疾病暴发继续高频率发生， 某些生产商品。人们普遍认为，疫情爆发的根本原因是 动物饲料场接近开源灌溉供应，需要对 灌溉用水，以确保向农作物提供无病原体的水。然而，种植者目前 缺乏可行的缓解工具来遵守即将到来的监管变化。首要解决的 今天是使用犁沟种植，以避免在灌溉过程中水和植物叶片之间的接触 和/或仅在收获时间超过3周时才进行喷雾灌溉。目前，但 不常使用的消毒解决方案包括用环境污染物处理灌溉水。 破坏氯等化学品或实施成本高昂的技术解决方案。En Solución提出了一种具有成本效益、易于实施、无化学品和残留物的灌溉方法 利用臭氧纳米气泡来中和病原体的水处理系统。臭氧，在两个 其气相和水相通常被FDA认为是安全的， 显示出有效地减少废水中的微生物污染;然而， 低效率和环境安全问题已经阻止了广泛采用水性 农业生产的臭氧。与现有的传统宏观泡沫不同， 技术，由En Solución的技术产生的纳米气泡具有非凡的能力， 在高浓度下一次保持稳定数月，并允许高气体注入速率 和保留时间。由于臭氧不会脱气， 而是在溶液中恢复为氧气。En Solución将提供 一个完全自动化的系统，消除了对必要的专业劳动力的要求， 提供当今的灌溉消毒解决方案。En Solución开发的技术还 对植物生产力和土壤健康有影响，因为高含氧水（ 臭氧纳米气泡在灌溉水中的衰减）已经被证明可以刺激植物生长。 根的生长。在第一阶段项目期间，En Solución将开发一个现场规模的自动化 臭氧纳米气泡灌溉系统，并通过试点实施充分验证技术， 经营农场和全面的第三方微生物检测。

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeks to address concerns about foodborne illness outbreaks linked to untreated open source irrigation water via a proposed revision to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule. The rule change addresses the threat to public health from the foodborne illness outbreaks that continue to occur with high frequency in certain produce commodities. It is widely believed that the root cause of the outbreaks is the proximity of animal feed lots to open source irrigation supplies, necessitating the sanitization of irrigation water to ensure delivery of pathogen-free water to crops. Growers, however, currently lack viable mitigation tools to comply with the impending regulatory change. The primary solution today is to use furrow growing to avoid contact between water and plant leaves during irrigation and/or to apply spray irrigation only when harvest is greater than 3 weeks away. Current, but infrequently employed, sanitization solutions include treating irrigation water with environmentally damaging chemicals like chlorine or implementing cost prohibitive technological solutions. En Solución proposes a cost-effective, easily implemented, chemical and residual free irrigation water treatment system that utilizes ozone nanobubbles to neutralize pathogens. Ozone, in both its gaseous and aqueous phases, is generally recognized as safe by the FDA and has been shown to effectively reduce microbial contamination in waste water; however, operational inefficiency and environmental safety concerns have precluded widespread adoption of aqueous ozone by the agriculture industry. Unlike traditional macro-sized bubbles from existing technologies, the nanobubbles produced by En Solución’s technology have the remarkable ability to remain stable in high concentrations for months at a time and allow for high gas infusion rates and retention times. Environmental safety is greatly improved as the ozone does not outgas to the environment, but rather, reverts back to oxygen while in the solution. En Solución will deliver a fully automated system that removes the requirement for specialized workforces necessary to deliver today’s irrigation sanitization solutions. The technology developed by En Solución also has implications on plant productivity and soil health, as hyper-oxygenated water (a byproduct of the decay of ozone nanobubbles in the irrigation water) has been demonstrated to stimulate plant and root growth. During the Phase I project, En Solución will develop a field-scale automated ozone nanobubble irrigation system and fully validate the technology via pilot implementation at an operating farm and comprehensive third party microbial testing.