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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #350189
Title: Enhancing food security through postharvest technology - Current and future perspectives

Author
item PALIYATH, GOPINADHAN - University Of Guelph
item Mattoo, Autar
item HANDA, AVTAR - Purdue University
item SHETTY, KALIDAS - University Of Guelph
item WILSON, CHARLES - University Of Guelph

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/10/2018
Publication Date: 1/1/2019
Citation: Paliyath, G., Mattoo, A.K., Handa, A.K., Shetty, K., Wilson, C. 2019. Enhancing food security through postharvest technology - Current and future perspectives. In: Paliyath, G., Subramanian, J., Loong-Tak, L., Subramanian, K.S., Handa, A.K., Mattoo, A.K., editors. Postharvest Biology and Nanotechnology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishers. p. 1-13.

Interpretive Summary: Food security has become a common concern among academicians, socio-economists and scientists, capturing worldwide attention equally among politicians and lawmakers, basically because of the anticipated increase in world population to between 9-10 billion by 2050. Ultimately, the lack of adequate food and nutrition for humans and livestock will lead to poverty, hunger, and impaired development of children, particularly in the poorer nations. This book chapter focuses on key causes of food insecurity, and how those that are anthropogenic in nature could be averted. For instance, one-third of the food that the world produces is lost between the time that it is harvested and consumed. Therefore, saving more of the food that is already produced is a compelling approach. This calls for investments in postharvest infrastructure and postharvest research. Nanotechnology is in vogue for application of agricultural inputs (fertilizers, insecticides, growth regulators, etc.) in nanometer sized application or delivery systems. It can enhance the efficiency of application and utilization by the plant, adding to more sustainable practices in agriculture and food areas. This book chapter will be of interest to academicians, socio-economists and scientists, and world leaders.

Technical Abstract: Food security refers to less availability of food and options available or not available for enhancing its security. There is no one clear definition for a lack of food security, as the causative factors are multiple and broad. In general, the ultimate result of these factors is the lack of adequate food and nutrition for humans and the livestock, with the result that poverty, hunger, and impaired development of children afflict the poorer nations and result in trauma. In general, factors affecting food production, short term and long term storage, distribution, processing, wastage, etc., play critical roles in achieving food security. Optimization of each step would, in theory, provide the maximum available food to the people that have access to the food and those that are in need of it globally. Very little has been done to increase the awareness of reducing the wastage, applying technologies to enhance the shelf life and nutritional quality of highly perishable agricultural and harvested produce, increasing the processing capacity at the domestic level and, wherever possible, adapt a sustainable agricultural and harvesting (sea, livestock) system suitable for a nature-adapted living. There is a need to use novel genetic approaches to identify and introduce novel genes into crops to enhance nutritional content. A few examples of engineered traits are many, including ‘golden’ rice with enriched protein and pro-vitamin A, ß-carotene, to fight malnutrition in the developing world, multivitamin corn with high ß-carotene, ascorbate, and folate, and tomato fruit with enriched nutrients – anti-cancer lycopene, amino acids and organic acids.