Food safety starts with plugs

Photos courtesy of Jiffy

Food safety is an everyday issue for CEA growers. It’s important to monitor and control processes at several crucial points in production to fight potential contamination. While some growers may hyper-focus on food safety during growing, harvesting and packaging, it’s important to remember that food safety starts at propagation, long before produce ever reaches a consumer’s hands.

What should growers consider the biggest concerns at propagation?

“I would say the biggest food safety concerns for growers when they’re starting a crop are around three main inputs: water, substrate and then seeds,” explains Kyle Freedman, Jiffy’s global segment manager for CEA. He notes that Jiffy substrate is manufactured with a safety management standard robust enough to achieve ISO 22000 food safety management certification. That classification is generally sought by growers and manufacturers much closer to the consumer’s table. But managing substrate to the level required for ISO certification sets growers up to start out strong in food safety efforts from the outset.

Does a food-safe substrate mean it is completely sterilized?

“The microbial diversity of growing media is a benefit in the same way it’s a benefit for soil for conventional field-grown crops,” he says. “Plants need that microbial life.”

The enormous diversity of microbes in a good substrate will not only help crop yield, it will also help control pathogens introduced by outcompeting them for resources. Freedman suggests the microbial life found in products like Jiffy’s Preforma plugs acts as a form of insurance, keeping pathogens that may be introduced from taking over.

What tactics help keep pathogens from entering growing environments via substrate?

Freedman notes that protecting growing environments from pathogens entering from the outside via substrate begins with the substrate manufacturer. Jiffy’s Preforma plugs are designed in such a way that they can retain moisture content under multiple protective layers of packaging, which keeps them safe from pests and pathogens from shipping to planting.

“And then as soon as a grower receives the product, I think storage is really critical,” Freedman says. “Most of our growers will isolate a space indoors in their head house or in some storage area of their facility that’s built with safeguards to manage the introduction of pests and insects.”

How does substrate customization help food safety?

The variety of plants and the growing styles and methods used to propagate them means that not every substrate will work for every grower. And when substrate is suboptimal for a grower, root health can be compromised, allowing pathways for pathogens to get established.

“Customization is critical,” Freedman says. “Preforma is not only customized for the crop in the system, but also for (the pH and EC needed), changing the substrate environ and preventing pathogens.”