Pre-Cooling
How pre-cooling helps your produce
What is the
process of pre-cooling?
Pre-cooling is the removal of field heat after the harvest of a crop. When you harvest a crop, you essentially kill the plant. Like anything dead, it starts to decay immediately. Studies show that a crop sitting in the field for only one hour after harvest, will lose up to one day of its shelf life.
Pre-cooling
Methods
Room Cooling
Vacuum Cooling
hydrocooling
icing
Benefits of pre-cooling
- Inhibit the growth of decay producing microorganisms, which cause mold and bacteria.
- Reduces ethylene production. Ethylene is a ripening agent.
- Reduces respiration which causes water loss and wilting.
- Restricts enzymatic degradation which causes softening of the product.
- Greatly reduces the workload of cold storage equipment because the product is already at desired temperature.
- Reduces the amount of rejections due to temperature and spoilage.
In summary, Pre-cooling is needed to ensure the quality of your product because it stops the rot of your harvested crops and greatly increase the shelf life. Shelf life of produce can be increased 3 times compared to not pre cooling.
