ABSTRACT
Fisheries and aquaculture play a pivotal role in the sector of food production in order to support nutritional security to the country like India. At present, fish and fish products have emerged as the largest group in agricultural exports of India and contribute about 10.51 lakh tonnes in terms of quantity and Rs. 33,442 crores in value. The global food industry is mainly driven by the major factors like health, nutrition, and convenience. As fish is highly perishable, proper processing and packaging help in maintaining the quality of fish. Worldwide, an array of preservation techniques are followed, ranging from a simple chilled or ice storage to most recent and advanced high pressure (HP) and electromagnetic field application. Recently, a trend in the consumers’ demand, which encompasses high quality processed foods with minimal changes in nutritional and sensory properties, has been observed. To satisfy the consumers’ requirement, recently fish processing technologies are targeted towards technology up-gradation, value addition, product diversification, and quality assurance. In fish processing industry particularly, the word ‘value addition’ is most popular and appropriate, mainly because of the increased opportunities and demand, the activity is attractable for earning foreign exchange. India appears to have good potential to increase its share in international fish trade by exporting value-added and diversified fish products. The age-old fish processing technologies such as drying, salting, smoking, etc., aimed mainly for their preservation, and not compatible for the present day markets and marketing systems. Some advanced but very common traditional preservation techniques such as chilling and super chilling are generally insufficient to maintain quality and also for offering long shelf life and safety of the product. In case of freezing, usually adopted 164for long term preservation, is not at all free from quality deterioration with the progress of the storage life. Some newly developed technologies are coming into prominence, which targets inhibition or complete elimination of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms from the product to prevent quality loss. Few of the emerging technologies that find application in fish processing are High-Pressure Processing (HPP), Irradiation, Pulsed light (PL) technology, Pulsed Electric Field (PEF), Microwave Processing (MW), Radiofrequency (RF), Ultrasound, etc. Besides these, packaging technologies like Modified Atmosphere, Active, and Intelligent packaging also play an important role in fish preservation. The emerging technologies in the field of preservation of fish and fishery products have proven to be successful, not only in ensuring the safety, but also in extending the shelf life, because of their high effectiveness in inactivating spoilage and pathogenic organisms with-out deteriorating product quality.
