Postharvest Pacifica 2009
Pathways to Quality

15-19 November

Napier, New Zealand

Topics areas will include:

Supply logistics, consumers and world trends

• Innovations in produce marketing
• Sustainable food shipping (transportation)
• Collaboration and trust-building in horticultural supply chains
• Value creation and capture in horticulture chains
• Postharvest and supply chain economics
• Logistics and management of perishable supply chains
• Understanding consumers
• Consumer attitudes and responses to new cultivars and technologies

Biology of postharvest responses – capturing the “Omics” revolution

• Global approaches for understanding postharvest responses - metabolomics, proteomics, and genomics
• Physiology, biochemistry, molecular response to postharvest treatments
• Ethylene
• Texture and flavour
• Ripening and senescence
• Physiological disorders

Packaging and supply chain technologies

• Physical treatments to assure quality retention
• Coolstore systems and management
• Atmosphere control systems, outcomes and economics
• Modified atmosphere packaging
• Active and intelligent packaging

Market access

• Postharvest handling of organics
• Quarantine treatments
• Disinfestation
• Postharvest pathology
• Non-chemical treatments

Quality measuring systems

• Novel and non-destructive measurement systems for quality attributes
• Virtual approaches for understanding fruit structure
• Measurement and optimisation of nutritional quality and bioactivity
• Integrative measures of quality

Modelling quality

• Mathematical models of quality change
• Modelling and optimisation of supply and value chains
• Repeated buy models

Preharvest

• Preharvest effects on postharvest quality
• Breeding new cultivars to meet supply chain demands and consumer requirements
• Harvest maturity