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

> **NIH FDA R43** · EN SOLUCION, INC. · 2022 · $259,610

## Abstract

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.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10602335
- **Project number:** 1R43FD007703-01
- **Recipient organization:** EN SOLUCION, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** DIRK THIELE
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** FDA
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $259,610
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-20 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10602335

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10602335, Ozone Nanobubble Treatment of Open Water Irrigation Sources for Improved Food Safety and Plant Health (1R43FD007703-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10602335. Licensed CC0.

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