Consumer demands and postharvest innovation: the new generation

Abstract

Consumer demands or traits, whether determined by market organisations and strategies, or the consumer in the home, are critical components of both crop breeding and development of postharvest technologies and practices. Traditional traits such as colour, aroma, taste, texture and appearance have become default properties. Health and nutrition, and food safety have become greater points of focus in recent years, particularly with the upsurge in minimal processing. However, there is a further tranche of market and consumer demands which is increasingly determining consumer preference. These extend beyond product properties into production and processing systems and include traceability and provenance, environmental sustainability, biodiversity, social licence, energy and water resource management, and ethics and economics of food loss and waste. Looking further ahead, there is a rapid increase in genetic and genomic information leading to genetic segregation of consumer populations in terms of health and disease states, as seen in nutritional genomics, and taste and aroma perception. These developments, current and future, will all have multiple impacts on developments in postharvest science and technology, providing challenges as well as opportunities.