Postharvest losses remain a serious problem in the fresh produce sector. This collection reviews advances in preservation and disinfection, monitoring and management techniques to optimise safety and quality of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Environmental horticulture - also referred to as landscape horticulture and amenity horticulture - is the umbrella term for the horticulture that we encounter in our daily lives. This includes parks, botanic gardens, sports facilities, landscape gardens, roundabouts, cemeteries, shopping centres - any public space which has grass, planting and trees. This book reflects contemporary thinking and is supported by scientific evidence to show the role, value and application of horticulture in the landscape. The discipline of environmental horticulture, its importance and impact on the wider environment is explored in the first part, whilst the second part covers practical horticultural management of different categories of environmental horticulture.

Horticultural Reviews presents state-of-the-art reviews on topics in horticultural science and technology covering both basic and applied research. Topics covered include the horticulture of fruits, vegetables, nut crops, and ornamentals. These review articles, written by world authorities, bridge the gap between the specialized researcher and the broader community of horticultural scientists and teachers.

Chlorophyll a fluorescence is a tool for evaluating plant responses to stress conditions. Fluorescence can be used in plant phenotyping and breeding programs to monitor biotic and abiotic stresses including mineral deficiencies, soil salinity, and pathogenic diseases. Chlorophyll Fluorescence: Understanding Crop Performance — Basics and Applications reviews a diversity of instruments available for recording and analyzing different types of light signals from plants and addresses the use of chlorophyll a fluorescence in research on plants and other photosynthesizing organisms, such as algae and cyanobacteria. This book characterizes the phenomenon of chlorophyll a fluorescence, describes the methods for its measurement, and demonstrates — using selected examples — the applicability of these methods to research the response of the photosynthetic apparatus and plant tolerance to unfavorable environmental conditions. In addition, chapters cover a general background on photosynthesis, analysis of delayed fluorescence, and the pulse amplitude modulated (PAM) technique. The book is addressed to a wide range of professionals in photosynthesis research and scientists from other areas of plant sciences.

Postharvest Technology of Perishable Horticultural Commodities describes all the postharvest techniques and technologies available to handle perishable horticultural food commodities. It includes basic concepts and important new advances in the subject. Adopting a thematic style, chapters are organized by type of treatment, with sections devoted to postharvest risk factors and their amelioration. Written by experts from around the world, the book provides core insights into identifying and utilizing appropriate postharvest options for maximum results. - Presents the most recent developments in processing technologies in a single volume - Includes a wide range of perishable products, thus allowing for translational insight - Appropriate for students and professionals - Written by experts as a reference resource

Sustainable horticulture is gaining increasing attention in the field of agriculture as demand for the food production rises to the world community. Sustainable horticultural systems are based on ecological principles to farm, optimizes pest and disease management approaches through environmentally friendly and renewable strategies in production agriculture. It is a discipline that addresses current issues such as food security, water pollution, soil health, pest control, and biodiversity depletion. Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, entomology, ecology, chemistry and food sciences. Sustainable horticulture interprets methods and processes in the farming system to the global level. For that, horticulturists use the system approach that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific, economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable horticulture is not a classical, narrow science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only negative impacts, sustainable horticulture treats problem sources.

Besides increasing crop yield to feed the growing population, improving crop quality is a challenging and key issue. Indeed, quality determines consumer acceptability and increases the attractivity of fresh and processed products. In this respect, fruit and vegetables, which represent a main source of vitamins and other health compounds, play a major role in human diet. This is the case in developing countries where populations are prone to nutritional deficiencies, but this is also a pending issue worldwide, where the growing middle class is increasingly aware and in search of healthy food. So a future challenge for the global horticultural industry will be to answer the demand for better quality food in a changing environment, where many resources will be limited. This e-collection collates state-of-the-art research on the quality of horticultural crops, covering the underlying physiological processes, the genetic and environmental controls during plant and organ development and the postharvest evolution of quality during storage and processing.

Bananas and plantains are major fruit crops in the tropics and subtropics, making a vital contribution to the economies of many countries. In the last 15 years, substantial changes have occurred in banana production, among them the increased importance of fungal and viral diseases and their serious impact on Cavendish export cultivars, smallholder plantains and cooking bananas. Changes in production systems such as protected greenhouse cultivation, organic, fair-trade and integrated cultivation and their respective certification schemes have also become prominent. This book provides an accessi.