Advancements in post-harvest management of fruits and vegetables

Abstract

Horticultural crops like fruits and vegetables play significant role in food and nutritional security of world population. Being rich source of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients and adding to diversified qualities of food, their optimum use in food is ever recommended. However, seasonality and perishability are two major problems in their utilization while their demand as fresh, safe and minimally processed or value-added product has been continuously increasing. In most of developing and underdeveloped countries, there is considerable gap between production and net availability of fruits and vegetables. This gap is mainly due to high postharvest losses during production to consumption supply chain. Though the post-harvest losses vary from fruit to fruit/vegetable to vegetable, their varieties, storage conditions, quality attribute, etc., in general 20–40 % of total production of fruits/vegetables in developing countries like India is reported to be lost during various stages of supply chain. Due to their highly perishable qualities, as high as 80–90 % water content, soft texture, susceptibility to bruising, rotting, high transpiration and respiration rate, etc., the shelf-life of these products is limited whereas demand for such fresh, primary processed and value-added products, i.e. in all forms, goes on increasing due to growth in population. In this reference adoption of improved and simple post-harvest management techniques including cleaning/washing, grading, pretreatment, preservation, on-farm storage, coating, minimal processing, drying/dehydration, packaging, etc., have proved their utility and effectivity in reduction of losses. Reduction in post-harvest harvest losses has several advantages leading to enhanced availability of nutritionally important products without bringing additional area under cultivation, reduction in pollution arising from rotting of fruits/vegetables, availability of nutrient-rich variety of diversified products including ready to serve/ready to use products, enhanced agro-industrial growth with opportunities of additional income and employment generation and export of surplus quality products, etc. This chapter presents an account of simple post-harvest management techniques for supply of injury less fresh fruits and vegetables to local and retail markets. The techniques used for this purpose are harvesting at optimum maturity indices, pre-cooling/cooling, blanching, treatment with selected preservatives, edible coating, modified and/or controlled atmosphere storage, etc. The chapter also discusses some of the advanced and emerging technologies suitable for post-harvest management of fruits and vegetables.