Pragati Kaushal
Punjab Agricultural University, India
Title: Non thermal techniques in food processing and preservation
Biography
Biography: Pragati Kaushal
Abstract
The food industry is increasingly moving toward new product development and innovative propositions through new processing methods that allow doing things you could not do before. Thermal treatments have traditionally been used in the food industry to provide the required safety profiles and to extend product shelf-life. However, heat treatments lead to damage of temperature-labile compounds, resulting in partial loss of organoleptic and nutritional properties of food products. In recent years, the potential of novel thermal and non-thermal technologies for food processing has gained industrial interest. Since these technologies allow the food sector to meet product safety and shelf-life requirements while reducing the impacts on food quality attributes, they have potential to replace, at least partially, the traditional food preservation techniques. Therefore, non-thermal technologies are widely employed for food applications, e.g. high power ultrasounds, pulsed electric fields, light technologies, cold plasma, etc. The term “non-thermal” is used for technologies that are effective at temperatures below the lethal temperatures of microorganisms, even though some of them may lead to indirect temperature raises in the product. The non-thermal processing is used for all foods for its better quality, acceptance, and for its shelf life also reduces the operational cost. Innovative method have better potential than others conventional method and still an evolving challenging field. The various emerging technologies in food processing and preservation are hurdle technology, high pressure processing, ultrasonication etc.