Physiological Changes in Fresh-Cut Fruits and Vegetables and Their Quality Controlling Strategies

Fresh-cut fruits and vegetables are important part of food industry and this part increases rapidly in recent years. However, fresh-cut products are more perishable than the intact fruits and vegetables due to the physical injury and physiological responses to wounding. The advances on the physical effects of wounding, the possible wounding signals, and the subsequent events of tissue to wounding such as elevation of respiration and ethylene production, enhancement of wounding healing and secondary metabolism, etc are comprehensively summarized. Several strategical approaches to control or to alleviate those detrimental responses including raw material selection, processing line optimum, chemical and physical treatments, low temperature storage, and modified atmosphere storage are also illustrated and discussed.