At the end of the holding period, the inoculated almonds were transferred from the aluminum wrap into a stomacher bag that contained 50 ml BPB (Butterfield’s Phosphate Buffer), followed by submersion of the bag into ice. The uninoculated almonds, which were used for quality testing, were submerged under ice for no more than 1 min while still wrapped in aluminum foil. Then the almonds were taken out from ice, unwrapped from the aluminum foil, and stored in Ziplock bags for color analysis carried out in the same day. All stages of the infrared pasteurization experiments were done in triplicate.