The development of this manual was supported, in part, by USAID funds via USDA grant number 58319R-3-004, the National Agricultural Research Project, Ministry of Agriculture, Egypt. The first edition (published in June 1993) and second edition (January 1994) were much in demand and encouraged our efforts to update the manual and quickly produce a third edition.
This edition includes all the practices for postharvest handling discussed in the original edition, while providing information on additional practices for handling and food processing of horticultural commodities. The second edition of the manual is now also available in Arabic (published in January 1994) and the third edition will soon be available in Spanish (April 1995).
We thank Robert Kasmire, Extension Specialist Emeritus (Department of Vegetable Crops at U C Davis) and special consultant to the Postharvest Outreach Program for his careful review and suggestions for revision of the 3rd edition. We also thank Pam Moyer, in the Department of Pomology at UC Davis, for her work on new illustrations and formatting the text, and for proofreading the manual before reproduction. We also thank Don Thomas at the Postharvest Institute for Perishables (University of Idaho) for his aid in locating and providing some of the more obscure documents on postharvest handling and food processing; the University of California postharvest specialists for digging through their files and providing materials for the manual. And thanks are due to Marita Cantwell in the Department of Vegetable Crops for her helpful review of the various drafts of the first edition.
We had help from our international colleagues as well, and thanks go to Bruce Champ (Australian Centre for Agricultural Research, Canberra), Jose Emilio Suadi Hasbun (PROEXANT, Quito, Ecuador), Susan Woodhead (Natural Resources Institute, Kent, England), P.A. Hicks (FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific), Sergio Chavez Franco (Centro de Fruticultura, Mexico), Seung Koo Lee (Seoul National University, Suwon, Korea) and the staff at the ASEAN Food Handling Bureau (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), for providing references and access to unpublished materials.
Dr. Lisa Kitinoja
Principal Consultant
Extension Systems International
73 Antelope Street
Woodland, California 95695 U.S.A.
Dr. Adel A. Kader
Professor of Postharvest Physiology
Department of Pomology
University of California
Davis, California 95616 U.S.A.
March 28, 1995
Users' Feedback Solicited
The authors welcome suggestions for additions to this manual and for changes in the materials included in this edition and will include such changes in the next edition. Please send your correspondence to:
Adel A. Kader
Department of Pomology
University of California
Davis, California 95616 U.S.A.
Thank you for your cooperation and assistance.
