POSTHARVEST

LOSSES AND UNIT

OPERATIONS
Prepared by: Engr. Xymel Pearl S. Almocera
Contents

1 Basic Definitions

2 Postharvest Losses
Unit Operations

3 Processing Systems

4 Unit Operations
Product quality at
harvesting
Product quality after
improper mechanical
grading process.
Now it is waste...how many opportunities
have been lost!
WHAT IS AGRICULTURE?
Farming – production of food and fiber

Agriculture – includes farming and farm-supply

industries (feed, seed, machinery,
pharmaceuticals, etc) as well as the product-
processing and distribution industries, which
convert the raw food into the form consumers
want and move it to them (referred to as
agriculturally-related industries, or
“agribusinesses”).
WHAT IS AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING?

• Defined as any processing activity that is

or can be done by the farmer or by local
enterprise in which the farmer has an
active interest.

• Any farm or local activity that maintains or

raises the quality or changes the form or
characteristics of a farm product.
OBJECTIVE OF AGRICULTURAL
PROCESSING

• Provide a greater yield from a raw farm

product by increasing the amount of
finished product, the number of
products, or both, and to improve the
net economic value of a product by
raising its quality or the yield or by
decreasing the cost of production.
FOOD SECURITY
Food security – poses a challenge to rapidly growing
populations, in environments of dwindling land and water
resources

Horticulture – includes the production of fruits, vegetables,

flowers, spices, medicinal and aromatic plants and plantation
crops
- Has established its credibility for improving land use, and
generating employment and nutritional security
- Has emerged as a major economic activity in Asia and Pacific,
contributing to more than 50% of the world’s acreage under
fruits and vegetables
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

A. External Factors

1. Mechanical Injury
• Fresh fruits and vegetables are highly susceptible to
mechanical injury owing to their tender texture and high
moisture content.
• Poor handling, unsuitable packaging and improper
packing during transportation are the cause of bruising,
cutting, breaking, impact wounding, and other forms of
injury in fresh fruits and vegetables.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

a. Impact injuries, resulting from:

• dropping the product onto a hard surface;
• dropping the product into the back of a car;
• excessive drops during loading and unloading;
• suddenly stopping or accelerating a vehicle.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

b. Vibration or abrasion injuries result when produce is able

to move within a container because of:
• vehicles with small wheels and bad shock-absorbers;
• weak crates;
• bad roads;
• transmission vibration.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

c. Compression injuries are caused by improper packing and

inadequate package performance resulting from:
• over-packing of crates and boxes;
• too high stacking of crates;
• weak packaging.
 CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

c. Compression injuries are caused by improper packing and

inadequate package performance resulting from:
• over-packing of crates and boxes;
• too high stacking of crates;
• weak packaging.

Figure 1.—Various case stacking patterns: A. Block, B.

split Block, C. Brick, D. row, E. split row, F. pinwheel
(nonvoid), and G. pinwheel (void).
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

d. Puncturing injuries resulting from:

• nails or splinters from the crate or box;
• fingers or nails of a person;
• other crates, fork-lifts, etc.
• hard and sharp stalks of fruit.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

2. Parasitic Diseases
• The invasion of fruits and
vegetables by fungi, bacteria,
insects and other organisms,
is a major cause of
postharvest losses in fruits
and vegetables.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

• Microorganisms readily attack fresh produce and spread

rapidly, owing to the lack of natural defense mechanisms in
the tissues of fresh produce, and the abundance of
nutrients and moisture which supports their growth.

• Control of postharvest decay is increasingly becoming a

difficult task, since the number of pesticides available is
rapidly declining as consumer concern for food safety is
increasing.
CAUSES OF POSTHARVEST LOSSES

B. Internal Factors

1. Physiological Deterioration
• Physiological disorders occur as a result of mineral
deficiency, low or high temperature injury, or undesirable
environmental conditions, such as high humidity.
• Physiological deterioration can also occur spontaneously
owing to enzymatic activity, leading to overripeness and
senescence, a simple aging phenomenon.
Key process during the postharvest life:

❑ Respiration
❑ Transpiration
❑ Ethylene production
❑ Maturity process
 GENERAL TRENDS IN THE ASIA-
PACIFIC REGION

• High income countries such as Japan, the Republic of

China, and the Republic of Korea have, to a large
extent, been successful in implementing postharvest
management systems which minimize losses in
perishables, while middle income countries such as the
Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia are putting in place
systems and strategies designed to upgrade
postharvest capacities.
GENERAL TRENDS IN THE ASIA-
PACIFIC REGION

• Many low and middle income countries

continue to focus on capacity building in
order to minimize losses in fruits and
vegetables as they struggle to overcome
technical, infrastructural and managerial
constraints and maintain quality and safety.
PRODUCERS AND TARGET
MARKETS

Fruit and vegetable producers in the region can be

broadly grouped into four categories:
a. small farmers;
b. groups of farmers, clusters or cooperatives;
c. commercial farmers; and
d. foreign entities or multinationals
PRODUCERS AND TARGET
MARKETS
Small farmers – operate farms of less than 1 hectare
- Dominate the fruit and vegetable production sector across the
region
- Losses occur primarily due to the use of poor quality inputs, poor
cultural practices at the production level, lack of knowledge and
skill in harvesting, postharvest handling, packing and packaging,
inadequacies in basic and postharvest specific infrastructure in
terms of pre-cooling facilities, transport, storage and marketing,
lack of processing facilities, high transportation costs, poor
integration of activities along the chain and complex marketing
channels.
PRODUCERS AND TARGET
MARKETS

Small farmers – Show relatively little interest in

postharvest and marketing activities which are
primarily undertaken by middlemen, traders and
assemblers.
- Show relatively little interest in upgrading their
traditional practices and the quality of their inputs
- The situation is further aggravated by the warm humid
climates of most countries within the region.
WHAT FAV CAN BE PROCESSED:

Practically any fruit and vegetable can be processed,

but some important factors (which determine whether
it is to be processed or not) are the followings:

• the demand for a particular fruit or vegetable in the

processed form;
• the quality of the raw material, i.e. whether it can
stand processing;
• regular supplies of the raw material.
WHAT FAV CAN BE PROCESSED:

✓To operate a fruits and vegetables

processing center efficiently it is of
utmost importance, to pre-organize
growth, collection and transport of
suitable raw material, either on the
nucleus farm basis or using out growers.
PROCESSING SYSTEMS

A. Small-Scale Processing

• This is done by small-scale farmers for personal

subsistence or for sale in nearby markets. In this
system, processing requires little investment:
however, it is time consuming and tedious.
PROCESSING SYSTEMS
B. Intermediate-Scale Processing

• In this scale of processing, a group of small-scale processors pool

their resources.
• Processing is based on the technology used by small-scale
processors with differences in the type and capacity of
equipment used.
• The raw materials are usually grown by such processors or
purchased on contract from other farmers.
• These operations are usually located at the site of production to
assure raw materials availability and reduce cost of transport.
PROCESSING SYSTEMS
C. Large-Scale Processing

• Processing in this system is highly mechanized and

requires a substantial supply of raw materials for
economical operation.
• This system requires a large capital investment and
high technical and managerial skills.
• Perhaps the most important reason for failure was lack
of adequate quantity and regular of raw materials to
factories.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF UNIT OPERATION

• The study of process engineering is an attempt to

combine all forms of physical processing into a small
number of basic operations, which are called unit
operations.

• Food processes may seem bewildering in their

diversity, but careful analysis will show that these
complicated and differing processes can be broken
down into a small number of unit operations.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF UNIT OPERATION

• For example, consider heating of which innumerable

instances occur in every food industry. There are many
reasons for heating and
cooling - for example, the baking of bread, the freezing of
meat, and the frying of yam slices in oils.

• But in process engineering, the prime considerations are

firstly, the extent of the heating or cooling that is required
and secondly,
the conditions under which this must be accomplished.
Thus, this physical process qualifies to be called a unit
operation.
ACTIVITIES IN AGRICULTURAL
PROCESSING
1. Cleaning, sorting, grading, treating grain, seed, nuts, cotton, fruits,
vegetables, peanuts, eggs
2. Drying or dehydrating grain, seed, forage, nuts, tobacco, fruit,
vegetables, milk, hops, eggs
3. Grinding and mixing animal feeds, fertilizer
4. Milling sorghum, sugar, rice, cane
5. Canning fruits and vegetables
6. Packing fruits and vegetables
7. Dressing meat and poultry
8. Freezing fruit, vegetables, meat
9. Conditioned storage and transportation of products
UNITS AND DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

• All engineering deals with definite and measured quantities, and

so depends on the making of measurements.

• To make a measurement is to compare the unknown with the

known, for example, weighing a material compares it with a
standard weight of one kilogram.

• The result of the comparison is expressed in terms of multiples

of the known quantity, that is, as so many kilograms.
DIMENSIONS
• These include length, mass, time and temperature.

• For convenience in engineering calculations, force is added as

another dimension. Force can be expressed in terms of the other
dimensions, but it simplifies many engineering calculations to
use force as a dimension e.g. (weight mg).

• Dimensions are represented as symbols by length

L, mass M, time t, temperature T and force F. Note that these are
enclosed in square brackets which are the conventional way of
expressing dimensions.
UNITS
• Dimensions are measured in terms of units. For example, the
dimension of length is measured in terms of length units like m,
mm, m, km, etc.

• So that the measurements can always be compared, the

units have been defined in terms of physical quantities. For
example the metre (m) is defined in terms of the wavelength of
light, the standard kilogram (kg) is the mass of a standard lump
of platinum-iridium, and the second (s) is the time taken for light
of a given wavelength to vibrate a given number of times.
MATERIAL AND ENERGY BALANCE

• Material quantities, as they pass through food processing

operations, can be described by material balances.

• Such balances are statements on the conservation of mass.

• Similarly, energy quantities can be described by energy balances,

which are statements on the conservation of energy.

• If there is no accumulation, what goes into a

process must come out.
Thank You!