Post-Harvest Management: Say What Again?
Even after harvest, fruits and vegetables are alive and breathing. That’s just why, they need to be treated with love and care. Every step of the way.
Fruits that reach markets have usually have already lost a lot of their nutrition and aren’t fresh enough. They are not as juicy or crunchy as when we used to pluck them directly of trees. But have you ever wondered why this is so? That is, because the moment a fruit is plucked from its plant, it begins to deteriorate.
Loss is averted only when the unpreserved and unprocessed produce is made available immediately for consumption to the end user. To avoid this, a practice known as post-harvest management should be followed. Let’s first understand what that means.
We would all like to have a backyard in our house to grow fruits and eat them fresh. But today’s life doesn’t allow us this luxury. So we need to ensure that the fruits and vegetables coming from the famr to our homes is as fresh and nutritious as it would be if we had all grown it ourself. Post-harvest management or post-harvest handling is a process that ensures this happens – it is a stage of crop production which immediately follows harvest and largely determines how nutritious and tasteful the fruits will be by the time you consume them.
What’s done?
The whole idea behind post-harvest management is to lower the respiration rate of the produce. To this effect, the fruits and vegetables are stored in a temperature-controlled environment, which helps to prevent moisture loss and further reduces moisture loss.
Our approach at Second Nature:
We pluck at the right time in the right way: Did you know, there’s a certain technique to pluck a produce?
We make sure that the produce doesn’t turn brown after it’s plucked out. Not only that, to avoid heat of the sun, the produce is plucked in the wee hours of morning, when the temperatures are cold.
We’re careful while transporting: We take great care while transporting the produce from farm to factory.
Instead of piling the produce in huge crates, we delicately layer it, where each fruit is placed separately to avoid damage of any sort.
We even control the environment: For some fruits, even the composition of the atmosphere during transport has to be customized to ensure freshness.
Two-stage wash: Once the produce is brought to the factory, it is washed thoroughly to get rid of any used residue pesticides. We put all incoming produce through a two-stage wash to ensure they are perfect for use.
It’s simple – we take care of the fruits. That is what ensures that the juice is the next best thing to eating a fruit straight of the tree.