Emerging Postharvest Technologies

摘要

Over the last decade, the fruit quality concept has evolved from a large bright red color to a flavorful, healthy, 'ready-to-eat', 'easy-to-eat', and safe fruit with high consumer acceptance. Current consumer preferences, hand labor costs, fruit prices, human safety concerns, and global markets have been forcing changes in the production and delivery of fresh fruit. Immediately after harvest, fruits begin to se-nesce, deteriorate and postharvest losses occur. As part of the fruit senescence process,commodities start to lose weight, firmness, flavor, and become more susceptible to cold storage stresses. Temperature and other environmental factors surrounding commodities control the biological processes associated with fruit senescence and deterioration. Breeding efforts using new genetic tools are now used to develop fruit that ripen uniformly in the canopy with diverse predominant visual, shape, flavor, and texture attributes; and physiological traits at ripening adapted to minimally processed fruit. Because of recent advances in new nondestructive sensor technology and the long-term lack of flavor in the market, there is high interest in using nondestructive sensors to segregate fruit in the packing line according to their posthar-vest/shelf life potential and consumer acceptance. However, consumers should be willing to pay a premium to justify the extra cost of using any new nondestructive sensor technology.