Food Marketing & Technology - India June 2019 | Page 41

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to permeabilise cells of fruit and
vegetable tissues without increasing
the product temperature and avoiding
an excessive deterioration of the
tissue. It mainly depends on electric
field strength and treatment time. It
holds potential as a low-temperature
alternative pasteurisation process
for sterilising food products. In PEF
processing, a substance is placed
between two electrodes and the pulsed
electric field is applied. The applied
electric field helps to enlarge the pores
of the cell membranes which kills the
cells and releases their contents. PEF
has been demonstrated to be effective
against various pathogenic and
spoilage microorganisms and enzymes
without considerable loss of flavour,
colour and bioactive compounds.
Ohmic Heating: Ohmic heating is a
thermal processing technique where
heat is internally generated in a sample
due to electrical resistance when the
electric current is passed through it
using a variety of voltage and current
combinations. The particulate is heated
by the dissipation of electric energy
provides fast and uniform, leading to
less thermal harm to the food. Beyond
heating of fruits and vegetables,
the applied field force underneath
[the] resistance unit heating causes
varied changes in quality and
biological process parameters that
embody inactivation of enzymes and
microorganisms, degradation of heat
sensitive compounds, challenges in
the cell membrane, viscosity, pH,
colour, and rheology. The food-related
applications e.g. cooking, blanching,
starch gelatinisation, sterilisation and
pasteurisation. the information on the tag will help
to determine the possible cause
of spoilage by analysing the time-
temperature data.
Irradiation Technology: Irradiation
is food safety and preservation
technology that employs ionizing
radiation
to
inactivate/kill
microorganisms by damaging their
DNA. The process involves exposing
food, either in bulk or packaged, to
ionizing or non-ionizing radiation for a
specified amount of time. While treating
the fruits or vegetables, a radiation
source is held a few centimetres away
from the product and dosage of 2.5
to 5 million rad is used to kill all
microorganisms including bacteria. It
destroys insects in all life cycle stages;
inhibits sprouting on vegetables; and
prevents some chemical deterioration.
Currently,
irradiation
treatments
have been approved for onions and
potatoes to prevent their sprouting.
The best advantage of this technology
is that the food can be stored without
refrigeration. Intelligent Packaging
Radio
Frequency
Identification
Technology (RFID): RFID uses radio
waves to identify individual items.
RFID tags help to find the perishing
part on the basis of temperature,
time, pressure, chemical sensing, etc.
This technology is very useful in the
agriculture sector as it helps to improve
the management of information flow
within the supply chain. The latest
advancements in the RFID sensors
tags have improved monitoring of
the cold chain of perishable food
products, environmental monitoring,
irrigation, etc. RFID technology can
also be used with time-temperature
integrators to monitor the status or
condition of an item, such as pressure,
humidity, gas leakage and tampering.
The tag continuously monitors and
stores time-temperature data of fruits
and vegetables throughout the supply
chain. The data is checked at various
predetermined points. If the goods
are
found
spoiled/deteriorated,
Food Marketing & Technology
41
June 2019
Intelligent packaging is the integration
of sensor/indicator into the food
packaging system that has intelligent
functions for monitoring of food
quality and safety, e.g. freshness,
leakage, carbon dioxide, oxygen, pH,
time or temperature, and pathogens.
The technology ensures real-time
quality control and safety monitoring
in terms of consumers, authorities,
and food producers. Also, it has been
observed that this technology has
potential in the development of new
sensing systems integrated with the
food packaging like control of weight,
volume, colour, and appearance. The
application of intelligent packaging
in fruits (ripeness detection) and
vegetables (freshness monitoring) have
been found very useful. For ripeness
detection, the sensor was developed
to detect volatile compounds (e.g.,
ethylene, volatile acid, etc., these are
produced during ripening). While
for freshness monitoring, the sensor
works based on pH change or volatile
compounds
produced
gradually
during degradation of vegetable.
Furthermore, the sensor responses
were found to correlate with pH,
sensory evaluation, and bacterial
growth patterns in food samples.
Among
the
above-mentioned
technologies, only a few food and
vegetable processing technologies have
been tested in a real-time production
environment or are used nowadays at
the industrial level. In most scenarios,
further research and development
activities are still required to
completely understand, optimise, and
scale up these complex processes to
unleash their full potential.
* Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala
** Horticultural Crop Processing Division,
ICAR-CIPHET Abohar (Punjab)