Curry ingredient could clean up for food

The cuisines of Mexico and India aren't known for their subtlety or, perhaps unfairly, for their healthiness. But one of their most important ingredients, coriander, could not only help keep people more healthy, but could also boost cleanliness in food processing.

According to a joint research project at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California Institute for Mexico and the US, coriander contains a compound which is an unexpectedly powerful anitbacterial agent.

Dodecenal, which is found in the leaves and seeds of the plant, is twice as potent as the commonly-used medicinal antibiotic gentamycin at killing Salmonella bacteria. Most naturally-occurring antibacterials are quite weak, says study leader Isao Kubo from Berkeley.

The compound also seems to sidestep the problem of antibiotic resistance. Most commercial antibiotics work by interfering with bacteria's protein-manufacturing mechanisms, which the bacteria can counter. Dodecenal, however, works by destroying cell membranes, against which the bacteria have no defence.

Large amounts of fresh coriander, in salsa perhaps, might be a safeguard against food poisoning, but it's more likely that the dodecenal could be used in a tasteless formulation to provide disinfection in food processing. It could be used as a protective coating for meats, for example, or as an ingredient in cleaning materials, both for equipment and for hand-washing.