Infrared radiation (IR) heating as a non-chemical and emerging technology has the potential to be an effective disinfection method for almonds while preserving high product quality. In our previous studies, catalytic infrared (CIR) heating was investigated to determine its efficacy in decontamination of raw (Brandl et al., 2008) and roasted almonds (Yang et al., 2010). Our results revealed that heating raw almonds to 109 ℃ by IR, followed by slow cooling for 1 h to improve pasteurization efficacy, provided more than 7.5log CFU/g kernel reduction of S. enteritidis PT30 (Brandl et al., 2008). Therefore, it was expected that the process could further be improved by optimizing the IR heating and cooling conditions, and thus shorten processing time. We also observed that sequential IR and hot air heating reduced roasting time and improved microbial safety of roasted almonds. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to develop an industrially-scalable infrared pasteurization method with a minimum equivalent of 4-log reduction of SE PT 30 without compromising the quality of raw almonds by studying the efficacy of IR heating followed by temperature controlled holding on pasteurization and quality of raw almonds