B.Tech. Agricultural Engineering · Semester 6

Post-harvest Engineering of Horticultural Crops

PFE6.7 Processing & Food Engineering

Syllabus lecture plan

1. 01Importance of processing of fruits and vegetables, spices, condiments; 1 characteristics and properties of horticultural crops important for processing
2. 02General methods of preservation of fruits and vegetables and their relative 2 advantages and disadvantages; Flowcharts for preparation of different finished products
3. 03Sorting and grading methods specific to fruits and vegetables, shape and 2 size sorting, weight sorting, image processing, colour sorting, sorting effectiveness; Peeling: different peeling methods and devices (manual, mechanical, chemical and thermal peeling)
4. 04Minimal processing and pack house activities; Size reduction and juice 1 extraction: equipment for slicing, shredding, crushing, chopping, juice extraction
5. 05Blanching: importance and objectives; effects on food (nutrition, colour, 1 pigment, texture); blanching methods and equipment
6. 06Drying: Dryers for fruits and vegetables, osmo-dehydration, foam mat 2 drying; advanced drying techniques; quality deterioration during drying of fruits and vegetables; Canning of fruits and vegetables: methods and equipment, types of cans, failures of cans
7. 07Chilling and freezing: Chilling requirements of different fruits and 3 vegetables; Freezing of food, freezing time calculations, slow and fast freezing; Equipment for chilling and freezing (mechanical and cryogenic)
8. 08Post-harvest management and equipment for spices; Post-harvest 1 management and equipment for flowers
9. 09Packaging and storage: packaging requirements (for containment, 2 protection and other purposes); Characteristics of different packaging materials used for raw and processed fruits and vegetables products; bulk and retail packages; Modified atmosphere packaging, smart packaging
10. 10Storage methods as low temperature storage, evaporatively cooled storage 1 and controlled atmospheric storage

Part of the B.Tech. Agricultural Engineering curriculum (ICAR recommendations). Upload or find notes, previous-year papers and quick-revision reels for each lecture on theciae.