KIWIFRUIT PROCESSING : SOME CONSIDERATIONS

Whereas in the past the main aim of food processing was to preserve perishable foodstuffs for as long as possible, nowadays the principles of food technology look further than this.

In general way we can say that the purposes of the food technology are as follows:

1. to guarantee the wholesomeness of the foodstuff;

2. to maintain or improve the nutritional value and the sensorial quality of foods (flavour, taste, odour, colour and texture) and of their traditional processed products;

3. to develop new processes and derivatives; making the fullest use of the whole raw material;

4. to study the processability of a food material considering the different opportunities that food science and technology provides;

5. to optimize the processes in term of yields minimizing energy consumption and waste production.

In any case, food processing must no longer be seen as a means of solving contingent problems of agriculture.

This is especially so with a relatively new product, such as kiwifruit, which requires a food processing "project" involving a systematic study of all the possibilities.

Several interesting technologies are proposed in literature on kiwifruit processing; in fact, many Authors studied the main processing operations such as washing, cleaning, peeling, grading, slicing, juicing, pulping, drying, canning, freezing and freeze-drying.

In general, in these works, attention was focused on preserving some characteristics of fresh kiwifruit (green colour, high ascorbic acid content, tissue structure) rather than on the proposal of new ways of processing this fruit.

The principal results obtained in the experimental research carried out on kiwifruit, and reported in literature, are discussed in this review.

Lastly, some ideas and suggestions for future studies are put forward.

I International Symposium on Kiwifruit

C.R. Lerici, M. Dalla Rosa

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1990.282.51