ABSTRACT

Increasing demand for a wide range of harvested fruits or vegetables (raw and fresh-cut) has led to dynamic growth in sales and new market opportunities for the fresh produce sector. However, their preservation still constitutes one of the most challenging applications for the food industry as they share the ability to respire with only a few other foods such as shellfi sh and ripened cheese. As indicated in Figure 16.1, in addition to the common physicochemical (dehydration, oxidation) and microbiological deteriorative reactions that occur in all foods, they are also subjected to physiological degradations caused by respiration, transpiration, and ripening phenomena. These timedependent reactions are infl uenced by processing (peeling, cutting, slicing, destoning) and storage/ distribution conditions, leading to changes that inevitably lower the initial quality of the product. If properly handled, temperature and packaging can act favorably in preserving fruits and vegetables. Chill temperatures slow down reaction rates, and packaging may avoid dehydration as well as water vapor saturation, reduce respiration rate without asphyxiating tissues, slow down ripening, and minimize microbiological changes, depending on its mass transfer properties.