Postharvest Processing of Fruits and Vegetables

The term "shelf life" can be defined as "the time period that a food item can be expected to maintain a predetermined level of quality under specified storage conditions" (Shewfelt, 1986, p. 70). This period can be affected by numerous factors. For example, with regard to fruits and vegetables, shelf life may depend on the specific botanical variety, cultivation practices, weather, harvesting techniques, and storage facilities. These influences can potentially alter such measures of quality as color and flavor. Postharvest processing attempts to halt fruit and vegetable deterioration by either retarding or discontinuing the physiological processes that lead to natural deterioration (Potter, 1973, pp. 488-498).

In many respects, fruits and vegetables are more similar than they are different. They tend to be distinguished only by their common usage: vegetables are typically eaten with the main course of a meal; whereas fruits are often eaten as desert. Characteristics which these food items generally share in common include composition, storage requir

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y inactivating physiological processes" (Shewfelt, 1986, p. 70). An abundance of food-processing and food-packaging equipment has evolved-along these two lines. Just some of the different machines employed to process fruits and vegetables include trimmers, stemmers, snippers, huskers, juice extractors, peelers, shelling machines, pulpers, separators, graders, continuous blancher/cooker cooler/sterilizer systems, dehydrating equipment, pit removing machines, destoners, washing machines, shredding/grinding/chopping machines, strip/cutter/slicers (AERD, 1994, p. 15). For example, postharvest processing of cucumbers may involve cleaning, sorting, trimming, peeling, packaging, juice introduction, and preservation (ECFE, 1991, p. 16). Thus, it takes many machines to make a pickle. Indeed, food processing ranks as a major industry. In 1988, it employed over 2 million people in North America alone. Additionally, during that particular year shipments of food-processing and food-packaging machinery in the United States totalled 4.2 billion dollars. Furthermore, this figure appears to be steadily increasing (ECFE, 1991, p. 16). As new high-performance processing and packaging machines are introduced, they tend to decrease postharves
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Approximate Word count = 1699
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)