Technologies and Strategies to Improve the Quality and Extend the Shelf-Life of Post-Harvest Fruits and Vegetables

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Foods".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 536

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Food Science and Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Interests: post-harvest fruit physiology; fresh product preservation; biodegradable food packaging films; food packaging film performance enhancement technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fresh fruits and vegetables have a unique nutritional value and flavor that cannot be replaced by other foods, but most fresh fruits and vegetables are fragile and easily mechanically damaged during the post-harvest commercialization stage, and they quickly decay during the post-harvest transportation, storage and retail stages, resulting in losses in post-harvest economic value. Traditional post-harvest preservatives employing chemical residues present health risks. Therefore, researchers are currently committed to developing novel green and efficient post-harvest fruit and vegetable preservation strategies, including cold plasma, edible coatings, active packaging, biological antagonists, and other physical, chemical, and biological preservation strategies to extend the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables. Therefore, the purpose of this Special Issue is to provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the latest developments and advances in various emerging post-harvest preservation strategies for extending the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables. Therefore, we invite authors to submit original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Wanli Zhang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • post-harvest fruit
  • shelf life
  • edible coating
  • active packaging
  • antimicrobial agents
  • physiological quality

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

29 pages, 763 KiB  
Review
Mechanistic Insights into Vegetable Color Stability: Discoloration Pathways and Emerging Protective Strategies
by Jianing Zhang, Junjun Zhang, Lidan Zhang, Yuhong Xue and Ke Zhang
Foods 2025, 14(13), 2222; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14132222 - 24 Jun 2025
Viewed by 425
Abstract
During processing and storage, vegetables often experience undesirable color changes, including fading, lightening, or yellowing and softening, due to browning (enzymatic and non-enzymatic) and chlorophyll degradation. These changes diminish commercial and nutritional value. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain vegetable color and improve [...] Read more.
During processing and storage, vegetables often experience undesirable color changes, including fading, lightening, or yellowing and softening, due to browning (enzymatic and non-enzymatic) and chlorophyll degradation. These changes diminish commercial and nutritional value. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain vegetable color and improve the quality of vegetable-based dishes. To address these issues, it is a scientific and practical necessity to summarize and discuss existing strategies and innovative techniques. This review first highlights the mechanisms of vegetable browning. This review then provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in methods for color preservation, focusing on underlying mechanisms and techniques for inhibiting color changes from physical, chemical, and biological perspectives. A review of innovative technologies suggests that effective color preservation in vegetables is achieved by inhibiting the conditions that lead to three unfavorable color change reactions: enzymatic browning, non-enzymatic browning, and chlorophyll degradation. Current research frequently employs combined approaches that integrate two or more techniques to mitigate these adverse color changes. Moreover, most of these methods could simultaneously inhibit the three reaction processes. Future research directions are proposed for in-depth investigations into the molecular mechanisms of color changes in vegetables and the impact of treatments on the nutritional value. Full article
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