Advances in High-Quality or Value-Added Processing of Fruits and Vegetables—Second Edition

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Product Quality and Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 463

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Fuli Institute of Food Science, Zhejiang R & D Center for Food Technology and Equipment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: fruit and vegetables; clean processing; phytochemicals; polysaccharides
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Intelligent Food Technology and Equipment, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: modem molecular sensing technology; flavor material analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fruits and vegetables are widely considered to be healthy foods, and their consumption in large quantities every day is encouraged by experts. As a result of the accelerated pace of life today, processed products and nutritional supplements from fruits and vegetables are becoming increasingly popular. Processing, however, is plagued by two main problems—food quality decrease and processing waste pollution with no value-added utilization. Food quality decrease is generally related to processing factors, raw food material properties, storage conditions, etc. Fruit and vegetable processing pollution is due to the various food wastes, such as peels, residues, seeds, leaves, processing water, etc., which can be developed into nutritional or useful byproducts to meet zero-waste and green process goals. Many studies have focused on these areas, producing useful information, but many aspects remain unsolved due to the vast variety of fruits and vegetables and the different processes for each.

This Special Issue is a continuation of the previous Special Issue. It still focuses on the quality promotion of fruits and vegetables after processing and the utilization of their byproducts to create a clean process. This Special Issue welcomes a broad range of studies related to fruit and vegetable characterization, processing, storage, quality, waste analysis, byproduct utilization, etc. Original research articles and reviews are accepted.

Dr. Jianle Chen
Dr. Huan Cheng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • fruit and vegetables
  • process
  • storage
  • quality
  • waste
  • byproduct
  • function

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

23 pages, 2215 KiB  
Article
Improving Dehydration Efficiency and Quality in Highbush Blueberries via Combined Pulsed Microwave Pretreatment and Osmotic Dehydration
by Shokoofeh Norouzi, Valérie Orsat and Marie-Josée Dumont
Agriculture 2025, 15(15), 1602; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15151602 - 25 Jul 2025
Viewed by 317
Abstract
The impact of processing time, temperature, and sample on solution ratio parameters, along with pulsing microwave pretreatment, was assessed in the osmotic dehydration of waxy skin highbush blueberries. Fresh blueberries were pre-treated with 20% microwave power for 90 s before being subjected to [...] Read more.
The impact of processing time, temperature, and sample on solution ratio parameters, along with pulsing microwave pretreatment, was assessed in the osmotic dehydration of waxy skin highbush blueberries. Fresh blueberries were pre-treated with 20% microwave power for 90 s before being subjected to osmotic dehydration for 8 h in a 60 °Brix sucrose solution, with three different sample to solution ratios (1:4, 1:7, and 1:10). Changes in water loss, solid gain, total anthocyanin content, total phenolic content, and total soluble solid content during osmotic dehydration, as well as color and texture changes, were investigated at four temperature levels (room temperature, 60 °C, 65 °C, and 70 °C). The highest rate of reduction in the total soluble solid content in the osmotic solution was observed during the initial hours (0–4 h) of the process. The most effective combination for reducing the total soluble content of the osmotic agent involved the microwave-pretreatment of the blueberries at 70 °C, using a sample to solution ratio of 1:4, resulting in a decrease of 11.98%, compared to 7.83% for non-pretreated samples. The solid gain was found to be affected by the sample to solution ratio × temperature × pretreatment at a 1% probability level (p ≤ 0.01). The temperature, osmotic solution ratio, and microwave pretreatment interacted together to affect the quality parameters of the osmotically dehydrated blueberries, including total anthocyanin content, total phenolic content, and color. Higher temperatures, along with microwave pretreatment, showed the worst effects on the quality characteristics mentioned. Microwave pretreatment did not change the texture significantly in comparison with non-pretreated blueberry samples. The enhancing effect of microwave pretreatment and higher temperatures on the efficiency of the osmotic dehydration process was obvious. An optimized microwave pretreatment can reduce both the required processing time and temperature for the osmotic dehydration of waxy skinned blueberries, which in turn can lead to the higher quality preservation of processed blueberries and lower energy consumption. This could be especially useful for the large-scale processing of waxy skinned berries. Full article
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