Effects of Postharvest Handling and Storage on Pecan Quality

ABSTRACT

The United States is the world’s leading producer, consumer and exporter of pecans and currently experiencing high demand for pecans from countries around the world. Environmental factors such as temperature, RH, light, etc., under pecan storage, transportation, and distribution can adversely affect its quality attributes such as color, texture, oil quality, and phytochemical content. The diminished pecan quality reduces consumer acceptability, hurting the profits of growers and processors. With over 1000 varieties, pecan is one of the most scantily examined research topics for its commercial importance, quality changes, and alteration in the phytochemical profile including degradation of phenolic and liposoluble compounds. Most importantly, there is no review that critically analyzes and discusses the changes in pecan quality during storage. This review scrutinizes the factors influencing the quality of pecans, the underlying concepts, and explanation of the causation of these transitions. The central objective is to provide a comprehensive analysis of work done on pecan quality so far and propose some future research ideas. This thorough piece of work is intended to serve the US pecan industry by helping them understand the scientific bases of quality change in pecans and suggest for them some methods to improve the pecan quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Pecan
• oil
• storage
• phytochemicals
• texture
• conditioning
• packaging
• post-harvest
• shelf life
• kinetics

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by 2018 USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant program. Grant number: AM180100XXXXG014. The authors are thankful to Mansi Jhingan and acknowledge her valuable contribution towards organizing and proof-reading the article.

Author contributions

Fanbin Kong and Himanshu Prabhakar synthesized the review. All authors contributed towards writing of manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.