Post Harvest Losses of Fruits, Vegetables and Its Safety-A Review

Vegetables are highly perishable agricultural commodities due to high moisture content and higher metabolic activities. The post-harvest losses recorded during previous decades are alarming. Spoilage of fruits & vegetables mainly occur due to microbial attack, auto-oxidation and insect pest attack. As a result, about 25 to 30 per cent of the production is lost after harvest due to improper handling, storage and microbial contamination. As processing technology is a young science in India, the aim of this work is to review the existing knowledge about the way in which minimally processing along with edible coatings like carnauba wax and nisin can improve the shelf life of salad vegetables during storage at room temperature as well as at low temperature. With the simple non expensive technique the vegetables produced may be preserved for longer periods; also to make the vegetables available to consumers in a form of closer to fresh produce. These newer approaches aimed at preserving both the freshness and nutritive value of vegetables have revolutionized the vegetable processing technologies, but have not yet been widely adoptable owing to lack of infrastructure and unfavourable economics for small scale operations.