Advancing Cold Plasma in Food Packaging and Preservation: Microbial Safety, Quality Retention, and Mechanistic Insights

Food preservation sciences are facing mounting demands to ensure microbial safety, extend shelf life, and maintain nutritional and sensory quality, as consumers increasingly expect minimally processed, clean-label foods. Traditional thermal and chemical methods remain reliable for controlling foodborne pathogens and spoilage, but often at the expense of product integrity. Moreover, persistent aflatoxin contamination—particularly in nuts, corn, and grains—continues to threaten food safety and global food security. These challenges have accelerated research into advanced, non-thermal preservation interventions that can safeguard both product quality and consumer trust.Within this changing landscape, cold plasma is emerging as a transformative technology. Generated at near-ambient temperatures, cold plasma produces reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, charged particles, and UV-active components capable of inactivating microorganisms, degrading toxins, and sanitizing food-contact surfaces—all with minimal impact on food structure or composition. Studies have validated cold plasma’s versatility in a range of food systems, from perishable produce to grains, nuts, and protein-rich products. Beyond direct food treatment, cold plasma has shown strong potential when combined with active, edible, and smart packaging materials, providing novel avenues to enhance storage stability and prolong shelf lifespans. Despite these advances, crucial knowledge gaps persist regarding the mechanisms of plasma–food and plasma–packaging interactions, resulting quality changes, and the scalability of these technologies for real-world food preservation and packaging systems.This Research Topic aims to stimulate mechanistic and application-oriented research by highlighting cold plasma as a pioneering solution for food preservation and packaging. The collection will focus on how plasma-derived reactive species interact with microbes, mycotoxins, packaging interfaces, and food matrices to drive improvements in safety, quality, and storage performance. We are particularly interested in studies relating to microbial inactivation, mycotoxin degradation, shelf-life extension, quality retention, scalability, and real-life packaging integrations.To gather further insights in this area, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:- Mechanisms of microbial inactivation and pathogen control through dielectric barrier discharge, plasma-activated water, and hybrid systems;- Kinetics and pathways of mycotoxin degradation in high-risk foods such as peanuts, corn, and grains;- Impact of cold plasma on protein structure, nutritional quality, rheology, allergenicity, and other functional food properties;- Quality dynamics in plasma-treated foods, including volatile profiling, metabolomics, sensory modifications, and shelf-life extension;- Modification of packaging materials and surfaces by cold plasma, and synergistic integration with active, edible, or smart packaging for enhanced preservation.This Research Topic is open to Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Perspective, and Hypothesis & Theory articles. Topic editors: Mustapha Muhammad Nasiru, PhD, Muhammad Umair Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81017/advancing-cold-plasma-in-food-packaging-and-preservation-microbial-safety-quality-retention-and-mechanistic-insights