Quality assurance of harvested horticultural perishables.
Kader, A. A.
ISHS Acta Horticulturae 553:51-56.
2001
บทคัดย่อ
An effective quality assurance (QA) system throughout the handling steps between harvest and retail display is essential to provide a consistently good-quality supply of fresh horticultural crops to the consumers and to protect the reputation of a given marketing label. QA starts with the selection of the genotype and its proper time to harvest for the best appearance, textural, flavour (taste and aroma), and nutritional (including phytonutrients) quality. Careful harvesting and handling are required to minimize physical injuries. Each postharvest handling step has the potential to either maintain or reduce quality and in a few cases (such as ripening of climacteric fruits) improve eating quality. The availability of low-cost microcomputers and solid-state imaging systems have resulted in increased use of computer-aided video inspection to sort many products into two or more quality grades before marketing. Objective and non-destructive methods of differentiating horticultural perishables on the basis of their flavour and nutritional quality are being tested and will become excellent QA tools as they become more reliable and efficient. Safety assurance can be part of QA and its focus is on minimizing chemical and microbial contamination during production, harvesting, and postharvest handling of intact and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. Future research and development efforts should focus on developing better methods of monitoring quality and safety attributes of fresh produce as part of a QA system.