ABSTRACT
Fresh fruits and vegetables are essential components of the human diet as they contain a number of nutritionally important compounds such as vitamins and pigments that cannot be synthesized by the human body. A fruit or vegetable is a living, respiring and edible tissue that has been detached from the parent plant. Fruits and vegetables are perishable products with active metabolism during the postharvest period. In simple terms, the shelf life of fruits and vegetables can be extended by retarding the physiological, pathological and physical deteriorative processes (generally referred to as postharvest handling) or by inactivating the physiological processes (generally referred to as food preservation). Packaging has an important role to play in both the handling and preservation approaches to maximizing the shelf life; this chapter will primarily focus on the former since the packaging requirements of the preservation processes are not unique to horticultural products.
