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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Fresh-cut or minimally processed fruit and vegetables have strongly increased their market share all over the
industrialized countries. For that reason this market is currently very competitive, and forces the specialized
industry to develop improved sustainable techniques in order to satisfy new consumers’ requirements, and
guarantee safety as well as nutritional and sensory quality. The most important goal for keeping overall
quality of these commodities is the control of microbial spoilage flora improving safety. Every step in the
production chain will influence the microbial load. In this way, the implementation of a proper disinfection
program should be the main concern. Washing and disinfection is the only step that reduces microbial
load throughout the production chain and chlorine is commonly used as an efficient sanitation agent,
but the undesirable byproducts generated when it reacts with organic matter, force to find alternatives.
Moreover, efficacy of chlorine is limited on some products. For that reason, several ecofriendly innovative
techniques as alternative antimicrobial washing solutions (peroxyacetic acid, ClO2, acidified sodium
chlorite, O3, electrolysed water, etc.), pre-treatment with UV-C radiation or packaging under high O2 or non
conventional gas mixtures (N2O, noble gases, etc) alone or combined, seem to be promising to preserve
overall quality. However, industrial changes for replacing conventional with innovative techniques request
a fine knowledge of the benefits and restrictions as well as practical outlook. This work review some recent
results obtained with these emergent techniques on quality changes of fresh-cut horticultural products.
Description
Proceedings of the International Conference “Environmentally friendly and safe
technologies for quality of fruit and vegetables”, held in Universidade do Algarve, Faro,
Portugal, on January 14-16, 2009. This Conference was a join activity with COST Action 924.
Keywords
Ecoinnovative techniques Minimal processing Noble gases Ozone Sanitizers Superatmospheric oxygen UV-C