Strategies to Reduce Post-Harvest Losses for Fruits and Vegetables

Abstract

Post-harvest loss is one of the concerns of food security and global hunger in many countries. The extent of fruit and vegetable loss reaches up to 50 % thus, reducing fruit and vegetable loss and waste is the one of the leading issue for providing sustainably feeding the world’s population in the future. Major causes of post-harvest losses in fruit and vegetable occur during harvesting, post-harvest handling and storage, processing stages, distribution and consumption. Therefore, the use of appropriate post-harvest handling, packaging, transportation and storage practices is very important to minimize the amount of post-harvest loss. This paper provides a review which includes causes of postharvest losses of the fruit and vegetable and appropriate methods to minimize these losses. Keywords : post-harvest, fruit, vegetable, loss DOI : 10.7176/JSTR/5-3-04