Hot water and Post-Harvest Treatment Plant for Fruits

Abstract

Pakistan is the world largest producer mango fruits; the taste and the quality of mangoes are best. Many types of mangoes produced in Pakistan. As mangoes comes in summer and they can’t stay with good taste for long time after plucking from trees. These mangoes export to many countries like China, Iran, Japan, New Zealand and America. To export the mangoes in international market, Pakistan must meet the WTO/HACCP/ISO and SPS requirements. There are three best physical methods available such as hot water treatment, vapor heat treatment and irradiation. We have decided to perform the experiment of hot water bath for the mango’s preservation. For this purpose, first we sort the mangoes using image processing techniques. The image processing software allow the microcontroller to send the mangoes to bathtub or discard it. The conveyor moves and send the good mangoes to bathtub and if mangoes are discarded the conveyor send back to discarded tub. The heating temperature that we have set is 48 degrees as per recommendation the hot water bath temperature is 45 to 55 degrees. After hot water bath we use dryer to dry the mangoes, in last step we use chemical spray to increase the life of mangoes, but the chemical spray is be used for local preservation. In export quality mangoes many countries restrict chemical spray after bath. So, we have both options to save mangoes with only hot water bath and the second method is chemical spray or we can use both method at a time. This project has provision of both methods.