Challenges and opportunities of postharvest research

Research trends in relation to postharvest of fruit and vegetables are marked by ‘stakeholders’ who demand and therefore justify the research in this field.
These include consumers, agricultural producers, companies and public and private institutions.
Among these, consumers constitute a fundamental pillar.
A major consumer request regarding horticultural products is their low sensory quality.
Furthermore, these products must be completely safe and should provide all the healthy constituents associated with its benefits.
Spanish postharvest research is being funded by the National R+D+I, by the programs of the Autonomous Communities, and by private companies themselves.
The current National Plan does not address priority areas, enabling the development of research on any topic that is of interest.
Coordinated projects are encouraged, enabling ambitious inter-area projects involving breeders and agronomists with food technologists, nutritionists and even molecular biologists.
Postharvest research in Spain is going towards improving quality, ensuring both microbiological safety and toxicology and to optimize nutritional aspects when they reach the consumer.
In addition, the development of new products and particularly new fresh-cut ready for consumption or cooking are important too.
A remarkable part of postharvest research is aimed at implementing technologies or adapt already known to achieve the goal of ‘fresh for longer’, and the use of new tools (sensors, informatics, physico-chemical treatments considered as eco-friendly) to improve quality and safety.
The use of preharvest treatments and their impact on postharvest storability has gained much attention in the recent years.
Other research seeks a deep knowledge of the product biology and to understand physiological aspects that govern their metabolism during storage.
Fruits and vegetables are an important source of beneficial metabolites to human health, in this sense the postharvest techniques can assist in maintaining or increasing the content of these healthy substances.
The great challenge of postharvest technology is to treat the ‘fresh’ product properly to reach the consumer’s hands with a similar quality at harvest time and if possible with better organoleptic characteristics, although there is a great distance of space (transport) or time (conservation) between the two events.
In this keynote, an overview of the main results and achievements obtained by the different research groups will be provided.

VIII International Postharvest Symposium: Enhancing Supply Chain and Consumer Benefits – Ethical and Technological Issues

D. Valero

postharvest, quality attributes, Spanish research, bioactive compounds

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2018.1194.91