Sustainable Postharvest Technologies for Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables, commonly termed as "fresh produce" are an important component of the human diet, as these provide various beneficial and essential health-related compounds. Nevertheless, fresh produce is susceptible to postharvest deterioration and decay along with loss of certain nutrients due to innapropriate storage conditions and lack of standard postharvest technologies. In addition, the short shelf life is considered another major constraint that must be extended after harvest to ensure a wider availability window of the fresh produce for consumers. From this perspective, the use of postharvest approaches is considered imperative to reduce the deterioration of harvested fresh produce in order to extend their storage and shelf life potential on a sustainable basis. Sustainable Postharvest Technologies for Fruits and Vegetables covers various aspects of postharvest technologies with major developments over the recent past and provides a way forward for the future.

The sustainable use of various technologies and elicitors could be adapted from farm to fork in order to conserve the eating quality of fresh produce. Therefore, this book covers various sustainable postharvest treatments and technologies that could be considered highly effective for the delay of postharvest senescence and deterioration. Among the various technologies, the use of preharvest treatments, controlled atmosphere, dynamic control atmosphere, modified atmosphere and hypobaric conditions has tremendous potential for the fresh fruits and vegetables industry. In the same way, cold plasma, pulsed light, ultraviolet light, ultrasound technology, nanoemulsions, nano-packaging, electrolyzed water, high pressure processing, ozone gas, irradiations, edible coatings, vacuum packaging and active packaging with slow releasing compounds along with nanotechnology are highly practicable and possesses tremendous potential to be used in the maintenance of overall eating quality and storage life extension of the fresh produce.

Key Features:

• Overviews the major factors affecting postharvest physiology and shelf life potential of fresh produce.
• Focuses on major sustainable technologies having the potential to maintain postharvest quality and extend shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
• Describes practical and recent advances of various approaches indispensable for the maintenance of overall eating quality and food safety attainment for fresh produce on a sustainable basis.
• Covers how quality maintenance and shelf life rely on preharvest practices, nonthermal treatments, storage atmospheres, packaging materials, active packaging, edible packaging, coating application techniques, nanotechnology and ecofriendly plant extracts and natural antagonists.