Fruit Processing

Abstract

Fruits are the major food products in their own right and key ingredients in many processed foods. Consumers increasingly require food products that preserve their nutritional value, retain a natural and fresh color, flavor, and texture, and contain fewer additives such as preservatives. These requirements pose new challenges for fruit producers and processors. There has been a wealth of recent research both on the importance of fruit consumption to health and on new techniques to preserve the nutritional and sensory qualities demanded by consumers. Eating fruits and fruit products has long been associated with health benefits, though some of the ways in which these foods enhance health have only become clear in recent decades. This chapter considers defining quality criteria in freshly harvested produce, describes the principal causes of quality deterioration and the main storage and packaging techniques used to maintain quality, production techniques of various products, the impact of processing on both key nutrients and antioxidants, taking an example of fruit as a case study to demonstrate how the nutritional quality of fruits and vegetables may be preserved and even enhanced during processing, describing how the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, originally developed for the food processing sector, is being applied on the farm to cultivate safer fresh produce free of contamination from pathogens or other contaminants such as pesticides and minimal processing methods, new technologies in processing fruit.