Conventional and Biotechnological Approaches for Enhancing the Shelf-life of Fruits and Vegetables: A Review

Due to highly perishable nature and less shelf-life, post-harvest losses of fruit and vegetables results in high gap between production and availability. Various plants traits which need to be genetically modified for higher shelf-life includes lowered rate of respiration and ethylene production, less sensitivity to ethylene, lowering ripening rate, reduced browning, decreased chilling sensitivity and increased postharvest disease resistance. The importance of understanding the biochemical process of softening and the use of such information for retarding the ripening process has been demonstrated in this paper. After reviewing the development made in extending the shelf-life of fruits, it becomes evident that although success in this field has been inadequate, there are possibilities that fruit breeders will succeed in near future in evolving superior cultivars with longer shelf-life.