ABSTRACT
Farm Machinery and Technologies Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Cukurova University, Adana, Turkey
*E-mail: oztekin@cu.edu.tr
ABSTRACT
The quality and quantity losses in fruits and vegetables due to insect and microorganisms in their ecosystem increase in parallel with growing mass production. These problems are becoming more serious due to inappropriate cultivation and storage practices. Ozone is an effective and environmental friendly natural tool for both fresh and stored agricultural crops. It could be artificially generated and applied in gaseous or aqueous form. Unlike chlorine-based sanitizing agents, ozone decomposes easily and fast after the processing and does not leave any remaining substances, odor, or taste. Application of gaseous or aqueous ozone in fresh fruits and vegetables has been deeply studied in previous works as a way of enhancing quality and safety of produces and prolonging the shelf-life. The ozone usage in fruits and vegetables are mainly focused on its effect on microbial population, visual appearance, enzyme activities, pH, color, weight loss, texture, firmness, respiration, ethylene production, pesticide residues, and nutritional value, quality and safety properties, soluble solids content and titratable acidity. The studies show that the efficiency of ozone treatment depends usually on the contacting conditions (e.g., exposure time, concentration, pH, etc.), and characteristics of vegetable and fruit surfaces. A survey on previous works showed that although the results on ozonation of fresh produces are promising on a laboratory scale, data on large-scale ozonation plants in processing of fresh fruits and vegetables stay confidential business information of manufacturer. In order for ozone processing to become
commercially viable alternative to other methods, it is necessary to build a balance between overall cost of an ozonation system and its benefits.
