Trends and challenges on fruit and vegetable processing: Insights into sustainable, traceable, precise, healthy, intelligent, personalized and local innovative food products

Background: Achieving the goal of sustainable development of the fruit and vegetables (F&Veg) value chain is heavily dependent on processing at both the global and local levels. The future contribution of F&Veg to human health is widely recognized, but the scientific needs that underpin their production, processing and distribution still need elucidation. Scope and approach: A comprehensive exploration of the challenges, future trends and solutions for F&Veg postharvest and processing to counter F&Veg losses and waste, and to promote F&Veg consumption and sustainable development. These encompass many transformative aspects, often facilitated by integration of numerous tools such as human-machine collaboration or intelligent manufacturing. Different scales need to be addressed, such as i) processing operations themselves, with small-scale local innovative processing, design of alternatives to animal products and precision processing, ii) relations with the consumer with traceability systems, personalization, and food sharing, and iii) insertion in the larger scale of bioeconomy. Key findings and conclusions: In the future, the cohesion between processing type, products and consumers should need to be further strengthened to ensure that it meets the more recent demands of the consumer and citizen, such as environmentally friendly and personalized, while the more classical quality traits such as (low) cost, convenience, and taste are preserved and the prerequisites of safety and nutrition are not compromised. This demands a high level of innovation for the entire processing in a short term and it will mean a new balance in F&Veg value chains. The future tasks involve interdisciplinary and cross-border collaboration, and the F&Veg production and processing needs are global, but their application will require different approaches in different regions.

Automated summary

This article comprehensively explores the challenges, future trends, and solutions for postharvest and processing of fruits and vegetables (F&Veg) in order to promote their consumption and sustainable development. There is a need for transformative aspects in small-scale innovative processing, consumer relations, and integration into the bioeconomy.