Fresh Produce Perishability
Food goes off. Fruit & vegetables are food. No one likes fruit & vegetables going off, as it decreases their commercial value, their nutritional value and their perceived overall value. The Fresh Produce Perishability concept acknowledges the negative impact these three value components are able to generate if fruit & vegetables are not moved through the fresh produce supply chain with all due care and pace, subject to the specific characteristics of the multitude of fresh produce that are part of the human consumption profile.
Contributing Factors
Fresh Produce comes in different shapes, sizes, weights and tolerances. But somehow we manage to harvest fruit & vegetables, grade it, pack it, send it to markets or distribution centres, and then on the retail outlets where all these individual fruit and vegetable types and varieties come together in a place called the produce department, constituting the product category supermarket operators find the most challenging to manage. Yet it is also the category they need and want to get "right" everyday, as they have learned that a not so appealing produce department can impact stores across the entire offering, as customers, rightly or wrongly, develop assumptions about the store offer, based on how they perceive the store's produce offer on the day they come to shop.
Handling
It does not matter how well a crop has been grown and nurtured as it matured. If the harvesting team is inexperienced, or the automated harvesting system is not calibrated sufficiently, damage will occur at the time of harvest.
This damage might present as torn leaves, punctured fruit or an out of shape form. Actually, damage might not present at all when produce is mismanaged during harvest.
But damage cause will aggravate as the produce moves through the supply chain.
Packaging
The time of "one crate fits all' approach is long gone. Modern supply chains require fit for purpose packaging to afford the produce opitmum protection during its journey to the retail customers.
Mismatched produce and packaging does not travel well and is typically based on false economies. Should not the whole objective be to have quality produce protected by fit for purpose packaging to aid receiving optimum returns for growers?
Time & Timing
Time is an issue that weaves itself through the entire fresh produce supply chain.
When is the best time to plant a crop? How long before the crop can be harvested? What is the best time of day for harvesting the crop? How long do I have before I need to place my harvested crop into refrigeration? How much time is needed to to remove the field heat from the harvested crop?
And here are some more time related questions...
What is the best time to deliver my crop to the market I have asked to sell it? Do I get a say when I deliver my crop to the supermarket distribution centre I am also selling to? What are the transport specifications for my wholesale market versus the supermarket DC?
Humidity
Basically, fruit like low humidity, whilst vegetables prefer a high humidity level. Larger supermarkets often have refrigerated multideck display cabinets which come with integrated and automated misting systems, designed to keep vegetables in prime condition whilst on display.
One won't see this system deployed on the fruit displays!
One way of telling that a store's training system needs further attention is when a quantity of strawberry punnets has been placed amongst the vegetables and is promptly dosed with water mist on the hour every hour, despite the fact that these strawberries will no longer be fit for consumption by the end of the day!
Ethylene exposure
Ethylene is a naturally occuring plant hormone produced by fruit and vegetables to varying degrees when the produce' life cycles want to start the ripening process.
Apples and bananas are amongst the fruit that produce substantial levels of Ethylene gas.
Bananas are shipped in a mature but green stage from the plantations. The green bananas are then ripened to a schedule in specially designed ripening rooms, located typically at wholesale facilities near population centres, with the help of commercially produced Ethylene gas.
Temperature
Temperature is a close companion of time when it comes to getting a crop ready for harvest. As are sunshine hours by the way. Too high a temperature can fry young vegetable plants in the ground. Too low a temperature and the fruit ripening process is at best delayed and at worst not completed in a given season.
Concluding Comments on Fresh Produce Perishability - for now
The above contributing factors impacting on fresh produce perishability are not the only ones. There are others. At times, it can be a combination of these factors that creates the most noticeable impact. Nor have the factors introduced on this page been discussed in sufficient detail. This will occur later this year, as the website grows.
In the meantime, developing authoritative answers to the questions posed in the "Time & Timing" Section of this page, will go a long way towards understanding fresh produce perishability from your crop's perspective.