QUAFETY EU project: The effect of hot water treatment on fresh-cut produce has been shown

The 3rd International Conference on "Effect of Pre- and Post-harvest Factors on Health Promoting Components and Quality of Horticultural Commodities" took place in Skierniewice, Poland, March 23-25, 2014.

The Organising Committee of Conference is very grateful to prof. Giancarlo Colelli and other participants of QUAFETY project for the active attendance on this scientific event. The conference was organized by Research Institute of Horticulture in cooperation with Storage Section of the Committee of Horticultural Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences and EUFRIN - Fruit Quality Working Group, under the auspices of Polish Academy and Sciences and Polish Society for Horticultural Sciences.

More than 110 participants attended the conference from 17 countries.

Within the eight sessions, 28 oral and 60 poster presentations were delivered.
The newest results connected with most of aspects of pre and post-harvest factors influencing storage durability as well as contents of pro-healthy components were shown. The innovative storage technology was presented in practice in ROJA (Group of Fruit Producers) in Regnów. The apple cold store is equipped with apparatus for Initial Low Oxygen Stress I.L.O.S –Plus.

Within the conference, the QUAFETY session was opened by prof. Giancarlo Colelli. He delivered the leading lecture: "A state of art on Quality and safety of fresh-cut products through the EC-funded R&D Project 'QUAFETY'".

The next QUAFETY scientists brought out the following issues:

Maria Grzegorzewska (Poland) - The effect of hot water treatment on durability of Chinese cabbage
Periklis Tzamalis (Greece) - Development of a diagnostic instrument for evaluation of food quality and safety management system
Manuela Pintado (Portugal) - Impact of processing and storage on nutritional and functional properties of strawberry
Natasha Spadafora (UK) - Evaluation volatile organic Compounds in rocket leaf for non-destructing analysis of post-harvest quality
Marina Cavaiuolo (Italy) - Isolation of molecular markers for the evaluation of quality in pre-harvest and post-harvest stages in rocket and melon
Elazar Fallik (Israel) - Testing suitability of melon genotypes for fresh-cut processing.

The Commission chosen from Scientific Committee of Conference awarded three posters among delivered presentations. The first place was delivered to the poster based on QUAFETY project and entitled "The influence of hot water treatment on structure of rocket leaves tissues" by Dyki B., Grzegorzewska M., Murgrabia A., Panek E..

Source: Maria Grzegorzewska, Research Institute of Horticulture, Poland