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Post-Harvest Treatments and Related Food Quality

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Abstract

Fruit and vegetables are still living plant organs after harvest with an active metabolism and ongoing respiration, ripening, and senescence processes which have to be controlled to maintain the quality of the products.

Most analytical methods to determine the quality of fruit and vegetables target specific compounds, compound classes or chemical sum parameters and provide thus valuable information about basic quality characteristics. However, recent technological advances have enabled the development of extremely powerful analytical instruments which are able to detect and quantify hundreds to thousands of known and unknown compounds in one analysis.

A reduction of temperature of 10 °C is slowing the metabolic activity of fruit and vegetables by a factor of two to three. Therefore, temperature during transport and storage should be at a product specific minimum to preserve harvest quality of fruit and vegetables. In addition to low storage temperatures, storage under controlled atmosphere and modified atmosphere packaging reduces respiration, ethylene production, and physiological activity and helps to preserve harvest quality of fruit and vegetables.

Post-harvest treatments like hot water treatment, UV-C treatment, and fermentation help to maintain quality and safety of fruit and vegetables after harvest. The use of starter cultures lead to an optimized fermentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Safety and Quality of Fruit and Vegetables, Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food, Max Rubner-Institut (MRI), Karlsruhe, Germany

    Bernhard Trierweiler & Christoph H. Weinert

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  1. Bernhard Trierweiler
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  2. Christoph H. Weinert
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Correspondence to Bernhard Trierweiler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Societal Transition and Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Cinzia Piatti

  2. Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Simone Graeff-Hönninger

  3. Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Forough Khajehei

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Trierweiler, B., Weinert, C.H. (2019). Post-Harvest Treatments and Related Food Quality. In: Piatti, C., Graeff-Hönninger, S., Khajehei, F. (eds) Food Tech Transitions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21059-5_3

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