Food freezing preservation is an important process due to its high quality and long shelf-life. In order to improve the quality of frozen sweet potato stem, the freezing rate, thawing, and packaging method was optimized by the determination of physical properties. There was no significant difference among the treatment of freezing rate. Further, the drip loss of sweet potato stem was higher at a relatively fast freezing rate (immersion freezing) than at slow freezing rate (natural convection freezing at -20 or -40oC). For the comparison of packaging methods, the aircontaining packaged sweet potato stem had the lowest significant differences from the result of color, pH, and hardness. From the result of the drip loss, the high frequency and microwave using thawing samples were more effective than room temperature and water thawing. Therefore, fast freezing and thawing rate with air-containing package were recommended to obtain the better quality of sweet potato stem.

Although bacterial outbreaks from ready-to-eat foods such as sprouts have increased, the information on microbial biocontrol by means of sanitizers is limited. Twenty sprouts of red cabbage, baby radish, alfalfa, and broccoli each were collected from the wholesale markets in Seoul. Ethanol and organic acids including acetic acid, citric acid, and lactic acid were used to control the amount of mesophilic bacteria and Bacillus cereus. Sanitizer mixtures of ethanol and organic acids showed a remarkable reduction of viable counts and, in particular, the sanitizer mixture comprised of 20% ethanol and 1% lactic acid seemed to be best by a reduction of 7～8 log CFU/g on the sprouts after a 10 minute exposure. At the same time, the sanitizer comprised of 20% ethanol and 1% lactic acid showed the same reduction for Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, B. cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus faecalis, with more effect toward the Gram-negative bacteria. Sensory evaluation by texture, browning, off-flavour, and overall acceptability seemed better just after treatment when compared to one day after treatment with the sanitizer. Therefore, the sanitizers of ethanol-organic acid might be an effective means to control the bacterial contamination of sprouts in palce of sodium hypochloric acid.