Food science articles
How to Improve Fresh Produce Supply Chain Risk Management for Better Food Safety
Supply chain risk management for fresh produce can include macro-level, external, and internal risks. Macro and external risk factors are outside a business’ control and can affect more than one location in the supply chain. Internal risks that cover a business’s operations, processes, and control measures can be managed using controlled atmosphere facilities and monitoring… Continue reading…
How Do the Effects of Ethylene on Flower Quality Impact Floriculture?
Ethylene is one of the main factors affecting flower and ornamental plant quality and longevity in the entire floriculture supply chain. Ethylene inhibits growth, branching, flower bud abortion, and leaf and flower abscission, reducing the quality and longevity of floriculture products. Floriculturists can increase ROI by monitoring and reducing ethylene levels in greenhouses, storage, distribution,… Continue reading…
How Fruit Quality Monitoring Improves Sustainability and Reduces Food Loss
Fruit quality monitoring is an integral part of the fresh produce supply chain. Fruit quality monitoring improves productivity and reduces food loss on farm and postharvest stages to enhance food security and responsible production. The environmental impacts indirectly through quality monitoring are reduced carbon footprint, less water resource depletion and pollution, and better biodiversity protection… Continue reading…
How Does Controlled Atmosphere Storage Extend Fruit Shelf-Life?
Controlled atmosphere temperature and relative humidity are critical for ripening and storage. The three gases that need to be measured and controlled are ethylene, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Several conditions, including gas composition, are reversed during the ripening and storage stages of the supply chain. Each postharvest stage of fresh produce requires specific conditions to… Continue reading…
How Degreening of Citrus Fruits Enhances Appearance and Quality
Artificial degreening changes only citrus peel color and does not affect other quality parameters. Several citrus factors, like maturity at harvest and cultivar-specific ethylene sensitivity, will influence degreening success. Postharvest degreening is the standard procedure and requires careful consideration of cultivars to determine atmosphere conditions, ethylene concentrations, and exposure duration to achieve the desired results.… Continue reading…
Postharvest Technology for Non-Climacteric Fruits: Best Practices and Benefits
Non-climacteric fruits have a short storage life as they must be harvested ripe. Several steps, like precooling and treatments, prepare the non-climacteric fruits for quality retention. Modified atmospheric packaging, controlled atmospheric storage, and different packaging systems maintain suitable environmental conditions during storing, transportation, and marketing to extend shelf life. Ripening is the last stage of… Continue reading…
How the Fruit Ripening Process Affects Freshness and Quality
Respiratory rate, ethylene sensitivity, and production are the main criteria for differentiating ripening patterns. Respiratory peaks that trigger ethylene production start the ripening process in climacteric fruits. Ethylene sensitivity, production, and respiration hike are minimal or absent in non-climacteric fruits. Several fruits show varying degrees of ethylene sensitivity and production and defy neat classification in… Continue reading…
How to Improve Mango Quality: Latest Research Findings from 2023
Research on mango in 2023 focuses on finetuning available information, whether postharvest treatment or optimizing chemometric models. Studies are increasingly focused on investigating underlying enzyme activity and gene expressions to find why and how observed quality changes occur. The emphasis is on optimizing quality not just for profits but also to make food production more… Continue reading…
Fruit Cuticle Impact on Postharvest Quality: What You Need to Know
The cuticle is crucial in the postharvest stages as it is the interface between fruits and external biotic and abiotic conditions. Cuticle impact on postharvest quality has several protective functions and is a barrier to water loss, mechanical injuries, UV light, and pest and microbial attacks. It can also alter postharvest fruit firmness and appearance.… Continue reading…
Understanding Fresh Produce Spoilage: Five Causes and Prevention
Various reasons are behind the fresh produce spoilage of the vast diversity of fruits and vegetables. Respiration, transpiration, microbial growth, damage and injury, and internal degradation are common causes. Product-specific temperature thresholds, relative humidity, ethylene, oxygen, and carbon dioxide are the five ambient conditions that determine the spoilage rate. Controlling ambient conditions helps to reduce… Continue reading…
