Fruits And Vegetables Processing Technologies

Post-harvest loss of fruits and vegetables are estimated to be approx 5 to 30 percent in the supply chain from harvest to consumption due to lack of infrastructure for post harvest management, processing and value added techniques.

- Amal Kumar, Manoj Kumar Mahawar And Kirti Jalgaonkar

Modern lifestyles and diets have prompted the human to adequately store a variety of fruits and vegetables, influenced on the development and implementation of many methods and procedures for preservation. Valorisation by adopting recent and improved processing technologies provides a great opportunity for the growth and development of the food sector. Value addition refers to the process of changing or transforming a product from its original state to a more valuable state and it provides more variety to consumers with the improvement in the organoleptic properties. Traditional methods of value addition through preservation include: canning; drying/dehydration; preserves; freezing; preparation of intermediate moisture foods; beverages (fermented, carbonated); and juice powder using established standard techniques. There is a recent trend of valorisation through packaging and also using novel thermal (ohmic heating, microwave heating, radio frequency heating) and non-thermal (pulsed electric fields, high-pressure processing, ultrasound, and gamma radiation) processing technologies for preservation. Technological procedures of processing of fruit and vegetables can be classified into a few processing methods:

Traditional Processing Methods:

Drying, concentrating, heating (cooking, baking, frying) cooling, use of additives - preservatives, acidification, fermentation;

Improved Traditional Methods of Processing:

The application of increased temperatures (sterilization, pasteurization), the application of low temperature (cooling, freezing), aseptic packaging, controlled atmosphere, freeze-drying, microfiltration and membrane processes, modified atmosphere packaging

New Methods:

High voltage pulse techniques, photodynamic inactivation, microwave processing – heating, high-pressure treatment, ionizing radiation, heating of electrical resistance effect and induction.