Postharvest management of horticultural crops for doubling farmer’s income

Abstract

In India, the diverse agro climatic conditions, varied soil type and abundance of rainfall offers immense scope for cultivation of different types of horticultural crops, including fruits, vegetables, flowers, plantation crops, tuber and rhizomatous crops and crops of medicinal and aromatic importance. India is the second largest producer (after China) of both fruits and vegetables in the world. Horticultural produce including flowers also earns good in export earnings for the country. Unfortunately about 25-30% of horticulture produce, 10-25% of vegetables and 30-40% of flowers gets wasted due to lack of post-harvest management which resulted in huge loss of crores of rupees. The minimization of these post-harvest losses may be reduced by extending the shelf life of fresh horticultural produces either through pre or post-harvest management practices or by processing it into different value added products. Several factors influence the post-harvest losses in fruits and vegetables that include losses due to physical, physiological, mechanical and unhygienic conditions, lack of proper storage conditions, refrigerated facilities and diseases and pests, etc. While harvesting to handling for storage till marketing several wound pathogens are known to infect the produced that destroy the keeping quality, quantity ultimately economic losses. Post-harvest decay of fruits and vegetables occur either between flowering and fruit maturity or during harvesting and subsequent handling and storage. There are many technologies already developed in the past which are available in the literature but are not practiced may be due to either materials are not available locally, not much effective or the technology is more costly. By adoption of simple post-harvest management practices, processing and value addition operation viz., proper harvesting, sorting, grading, packaging, pulping, pickling, drying and dehydration at farmer’s level during the peak season will help in minimization of post-harvest losses as well as doubling the farmer’s income.