Postharvest Management of Horticultural Crops: Practices for Quality Preservation

Description

In agriculture, postharvest handling is the stage of crop production immediately following harvest, including cooling, cleaning, sorting and packing. The present book elaborates the scientific crop management of horticultural crops starting from selection of soil and activities related to production and handling of fresh produces in the field. It aims to create capacity that would enable quality production, safe handling of produce to process, package and transport to remunerative markets so as to minimise post harvest loss and improve net availability of quality saleable produce to consumers and net return to growers. Taking advantage of these short-term market opportunities requires close links with the market. Postharvest loss is more serious as compared to production loss. Reduction of postharvest losses significantly increase availability of vegetables without bringing additional land into production and without using additional inputs. Although losses cannot be reduced completely, but can be minimised by adoption of modern cultural practices, harvesting, handling, marketing and processing techniques. This book presents several pre- and postharvest strategies that have been developed to modify these physiological activities, resulting in increased shelf life.