Novel drying and pretreatment methods for control of pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables: A review

Abstract

Presence of pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables is a serious safety issue for consumers. Efforts are being made to utilize drying technology to turn fruits and vegetables with high pesticide residues into dehydrated products with minimal or no pesticide residues are clearly conducive to ensuring safety and international fresh food commodity trade. This paper attempts to summarize the latest developments in drying technologies and pre-drying treatments for controlling pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, with emphasis on sun-, oven-, freezing-, vacuum-, and microwave-drying technology, as well as non-thermal pretreatment methods such as ultrasound, non-thermal plasma (NTP), pulsed electric field (PEF), high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), and irradiation.

Keywords:

• Food safety
• drying technology
• non-thermal processing
• pesticide residues
• fruits and vegetables

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge financial supports from the National Key R&D Program of China (Contract No. 2017YFD0400901), Special funds for Taishan Industry Leading Talents Project, Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory Project of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (No. FMZ202003). National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (No. JUFSTR20180205), all of which enabled us to carry out this study.

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.