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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Efficient, low-temperature supply chain in horticultural sector will lead to increase the profit of the stakeholders and most importantly reduce the losses and wastages. Low-cost efficient coolsupply chain is required for storage and transport of agricultural produce under controlled environment conditions from production site to end use. Due to lack of cost effective cool supply chain, post-harvest losses are high in horticultural produce particularly in fruits and vegetables. An evaporative cooling technology based low-temperature cool supply chain have been designed developed for fruits and vegetables. The EC cool chain includes; on-farm pre-cooling and storage, vehicle for transport of produce from farm to market, storage at wholesale level, retailer level and street vending cart. All the developed technologies were evaluated for their performance by loading fruits and vegetables. The cool supply chain maintained 10ºC to 13ºCtemperature lower than that of ambient with relative humidity above 80%.Vegetables remained fresh and turgid throughout the cool supply chain. The developed technology is eco-friendly, low cost, efficient and can be used as cool supply chain of horticultural produce. The developed system requires less investment and can be very useful to farmers, traders and vendors and can get more return (higher earning) by saving loss of horticultural produce particularly fruits and vegetables.