ABSTRACT
Food preservation is a vital means of achieving global sufficiency of food supplies and studies on both traditional and new methods of preservation should be actively pursued with a view of applying or developing them. This chapter presents a picture of the research activities in food irradiation which have been carried out in various countries and executed and/or sponsored by a number of international organizations. Irradiation is becoming well-known as one of the techniques applicable to the solution of the problem of preserving more agricultural produce and food. It is a clean, environmentally attractive, physical method of food preservation, which is modest in its energy requirements, leads to the reduction of conventional fuel consumption, and reduces the pollution of the atmosphere. It is evident that, while many countries have focused their attention on chemical and biological actions of radiation on food matter, other national programs have concentrated on practical applications relying, for basic studies, on other countries or international organizations.
