Critical Points of the Postharvest Chain, Part IV

In previous posts, we talked about the importance of the stages prior to the arrival of our fruit to the packing; to continue, we are going to pick up right at this point. I would like to start with the emphasis on the fundamentals of the importance of a good harvest since packing cannot or should not have to correct errors that have not been corrected in harvest, packing of course must select, but the primary stage must be in charge of doing a "cleaning" on the harvested fruit. For this reason packing does not have the ability to improve poor quality; The "packing" or processes stage works with the raw material it receives, and a "game" is generated between time and temperatures. Here we are against the clock, we are advancing in senescence. Considering the fact that we must pack a certain exportable quality, we must start with a good pre-cold, a good pre-cold should bring the fruit to temperature in a couple of hours to start the process in an acceptable way, we should have a time in the chamber after this pre-cold waiting process In the case of berries, bringing the pulp to 4-5 degrees would be fine, this always depending on the condition of the fruit arriving at packing, if we are in a poor condition we can take risks by lowering the temperature further prior to the process , generating unwanted bruises, due to blows to the fruit in the process line. Critical points in the process line, the turning, in the primary stage with low temperature where I can generate great problems is in the emptying to the line, if we do not have a mechanized emptying we must take care of the flow, but at the same time the volumes, trying not to generate additional problems to which our fruit may already have. A good sorter, or a good manual selection works differently for obvious reasons, but they serve the same objective: to remove undesirable defects, which we do not want. When we have large volumes of fruit, a manual sorter, given the shipping pressure, becomes tremendously complex, hence the great importance of having adequate harvesting processes, which is complemented with permanent inductions, although it is repetitive, each variety is different, such as In everything there are general guidelines, but we must note the exceptions since that is where the ability to pack and differentiate categories by destination markets and clients lies. Many times we trust the electronic sorter, but this also requires constant supervision, calibration and observation, we cannot trust that the machine will do all the work, we must get involved in the process. And with this I am talking about permanently looking at the discard, for example, which will tell us a lot about how our packaging quality is, without ceasing to review and analyze the packed fruit. As we can see, it is impossible to leave out the human factor, we have tremendous teams in the industry, with high technology and state-of-the-art software, but without the human factor there is no quality work. When I started the post, I said that it is a game of times and temperatures, this considering that maximum, for example, in blueberries, 5 days until dispatch, blackberries, raspberries much less. Temperatures as I said, depending on the condition of our fruit, always considering that the faster we lower the temperature and keep it low, without cracks, I am prolonging the life of my fruit, due to its low respiration rate, stopping the ripening process. Human factor again, we must control each of the stages, times and temperatures, but not only control but use the data to make decisions, modify times, advance batches, change destinations, depending on quality and condition, by customers and markets. Modify technologies, which do not do magic: they only preserve the quality that comes from the orchard. All this to try to reach the destination market with the best quality and condition, and grant the Delight to the buyer, who wants to eat quality above all else! ? ?