Purfresh has this week thrown its support behind the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Specialty Crop Research Initiative by donating equipment, software technology and technical expertise to the project.
Running under the title 'Increasing Consumption of Specialty Crops by Enhancing Quality and Safety' and lead by the University of California and the University of Florida in collaboration with the USDA ARS, the project aims to help fresh fruit and vegetable producers remove post-harvest impediments that prevent produce from being marketed.
The goal of the initiative is to demonstrate how fresh produce with enhanced flavours can be successfully handled without compromising food safety, so as to improve consumer satisfaction and change buying habits to increase consumption.
Purification and protection specialist Purfresh has therefore installed a Purfresh Cold Storage system and lab equipment at the University of California, Davis, and the group is also donating up to five Purfresh Transport systems while contributing technical support during the three-year project.
Picking fruit when it has fully matured can lead to decay and over-ripening by the time it reaches the consumer,' said Andy Smith, vice-president of products for Purfresh. 'Researchers are looking for new technologies to help delay harvest – to deliver riper, better tasting fruit to consumers without decay.
'Purfresh Cold Storage, Purfresh Transport and Intellipur are innovative new solutions that are designed to combat these problems,' he added. 'We feel our technologies and technical expertise will prove to be highly valuable for this project and we are honoured to be supporting these efforts.'
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