MAP: Background, Importance, Benefits, Effects on Produce Quality, and Some Pitfalls

Fresh fruits and vegetables are living organs with continuous within-package catabolic metabolism. Postharvest quality loss is primarily a function of respiration, over ripening, water loss, enzymatic discoloration, decay and rot, senescence and mechanical damages suffered during preparation, shipping and handling. MAP and consumption of packaged and minimally processed fresh produce has significantly increased since the 1990s. Dramatic advances have occurred regarding package technology, film/resin characteristics, packaging machinery, mathematical models, accumulation of base respiration data, and product shelf-life. Several advances have fostered a shift in the pack-n-pray mentality to a science and information-based, user input driven technology. However, numerous materials, designs and/or programming flaws still abound. For example, temperature abuse, imperfections in polymeric co-extrusion layers, thickness, and microperforation sizes, perforation blockage, low O₂ or the anaerobic threshold, and raw materials variety and quality effects skew results and efficacy. Oftentimes a packaged product may look good yet, the consumer can become disappointed based upon expected quality attributes that are not conveyed due to physiological stresses. Through our presentations, we aim to shed light on the more salient problems and deliver plausible package-design solutions based on comprehensive data inputs and programming based critical input variables.