Non-Thermal Processing Technologies for the Fruit and Vegetable Industry

Fruits and vegetables rapidly spoil due to growth of microorganisms, which further render them unsafe for human consumption. The traditional methods of food preservation, which involves drying, canning, salting, curing, and chemical preservation, can significantly affect food quality by diminishing nutrients during heat processing. This can alter the texture of the products, leave chemical residues in the final processed products, which in turn has greater impact over consumers’ safety and health concerns. To combat this problem, various current non-thermal food processing techniques can be employed in fruit and vegetable processing industries to enhance consumer satisfaction for delivering wholesome food products to the market, thus increasing demand.

Non-Thermal Processing Technologies for the Fruit and Vegetable Industry introduces the various non-thermal food processing techniques especially employed for fruits and vegetables processing industries; it deals with the effect of several non-thermal processing techniques on quality aspects of processed fruits and vegetable products and keeping quality and consumer acceptability.

Key Features:

• Describes the high-pressure processing techniques employed for processing fruit and vegetable based beverages
• Discusses the safety aspects of using various innovative non-thermal based technologies for the fruits and vegetables processing industries.
• Explains ozone application, cold plasma, ultrasound and UV irradiation for fruits and vegetables with their advantages, disadvantages, process operations, mechanism for microbes in activation etc.
• Presents the commercially viable and economically feasible non-thermal processing technologies for fruit and vegetable industry.

This book addresses professors, scientists, food engineers, research scholars, students and industrial personnel for stability enhancement of fruit- and vegetable-based food products by using novel non-thermal food processing techniques. Readers will come to know the current and emerging trends in use of non-thermal processing techniques for its application in several fruit- and vegetable-based food processing industries.

Dr. M. Selvamuthukumaran is presently Professor, Department of Food Science & Technology, Hamelmalo Agricultural College, Eritrea. He was a visiting Professor at Haramaya University, School of Food Science & Postharvest Technology, Institute of Technology, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. He received his PhD in Food Science from Defence Food Research Laboratory affiliated to University of Mysore, India. His core area of research is processing of underutilized fruits for development of antioxidant rich functional food products. He has transferred several technologies to the Indian firms as an outcome of his research work. He received several awards and citations for his research work. He had published several international papers and book chapters in the area of antioxidants and functional foods. He has guided several national and international postgraduate students in the area of food science and technology.