Recent Advances in Reducing Food Losses in the Supply Chain of Fresh Agricultural Produce

Abstract

Fruits and vegetables are highly nutritious agricultural produce with tremendous human health benefits. They are also highly perishable and as such are easily susceptible to spoilage, leading to a reduction in quality attributes and induced food loss. Cold chain technologies have over the years been employed to reduce the quality loss of fruits and vegetables from farm to fork. However, a high amount of losses (≈50%) still occur during the packaging, pre-cooling, transportation, and storage of these fresh agricultural produce. This study highlights the current state-of-the-art of various advanced tools employed to reducing the quality loss of fruits and vegetables during the packaging, storage, and transportation cold chain operations, including the application of imaging technology, spectroscopy, multi-sensors, electronic nose, radio frequency identification, printed sensors, acoustic impulse response, and mathematical models. It is shown that computer vision, hyperspectral imaging, multispectral imaging, spectroscopy, X-ray imaging, and mathematical models are well established in monitoring and optimizing process parameters that affect food quality attributes during cold chain operations. We also identified the Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual representation models of a particular fresh produce (digital twins) as emerging technologies that can help monitor and control the uncharted quality evolution during its postharvest life. These advances can help diagnose and take measures against potential problems affecting the quality of fresh produce in the supply chains. Plausible future pathways to further develop these emerging technologies and help in the significant reduction of food losses in the supply chain of fresh produce are discussed. Future research should be directed towards integrating IoT and digital twins for multiple shipments in order to intensify real-time monitoring of the cold chain environmental conditions, and the eventual optimization of the postharvest supply chains. This study gives promising insight towards the use of advanced technologies in reducing losses in the postharvest supply chain of fruits and vegetables.

Impact of Bullwhip Effect in Quality and Waste in Perishable Supply Chain

“…Ref. [41] proposes a supply chain that conserves the nutrients of these products starting from the producer or farmer, continuing with the packaging process, pre-cooling, primary transport, frozen storage, secondary transport, and retail. Ref.…”

Emerging Concepts and Practices in Post-Harvest Management of Horticultural Crops Revisited

“…Techniques that consist of collecting data from one or more sources and constructing a systematic representation of the data in a model are generally known as modelling techniques. Various modelling techniques are being used in this post-harvest industry to describe numerous processes and to predict various parameters and conditions [104]. Among these, as a consequence of the complexity and efficiency of computers and the accessibility and affordability of modelling techniques, mathematical modelling techniques are currently becoming incredibly widespread as a substitution for costly and complicated experiments of cold chain maintenance in postharvest sector [105].…”

Special Issue “Advances in Postharvest Process Systems”

“…Different food and crops also need to be stored and preserved in particular ways to maintain their quality best. Onwude et al [1] reviews the recent advances in technologies to reduce the quality loss of fresh agricultural produce in the supply chain, including the applications of imaging technology, spectroscopy, multi-sensors, electronic nose, radio frequency identification, printed sensors, acoustic impulse response, and mathematical models. The Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual representation models of a particular fresh produce (digital twins) are particularly identified as emerging technologies that can help monitor and control the quality during postharvest.…”

“…This special issue consists of three sections, focusing on food storage and preservation technologies [1][2][3][4], food processing technologies [5][6][7][8], and the applications of advanced mathematical modeling and computer simulations [9][10][11]. We wish to acknowledge the expert contributions of all authors here.…”