Strategic Post-Harvest Management and Value Enhancement for Horticultural Crops: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Effective post-harvest management is essential for maintaining the quality and prolonging the shelf life of horticultural crops, ensuring they reach consumers in prime condition. This review outlines the critical components of post-harvest management for horticultural crops, highlighting the importance of appropriate handling, storage, and processing methods to preserve nutritional content, texture, flavor, and visual appeal. It explores various factors contributing to post-harvest losses, including physiological, pathological, mechanical influences, as well as environmental conditions like temperature, humidity and ethylene exposure. The review evaluates pre-harvest and post-harvest treatments and technologies aimed at reducing losses, such as harvesting at optimal maturity, temperature regulation, CAS, MAP and the application of post-harvest chemicals and natural compounds. This review emphasizes strategies to improve the storability of fresh vegetables, including value addition through drying technologies, temperature and storage atmosphere management, and the use of anti-senescent compounds like salicylic acid, nitric oxide, 1-methylcyclopropene, and methyl jasmonate etc.