Vol 44 (2015)

This volume #44 of Chemical Engineering Transactions publishes articles on themes related to Nut and Vegetable Production Engineering.
This volume is an important source for the development and application of technology in the wine, fruit, and horticultural production sectors, presenting works of high quality to meet the demands of consumers to obtain safe, affordable produce provided by a sustainable agricultural sector that also satisfies the needs of producers to improve profitability without reducing quality.
In recent years the fruit and vegetable sector has been involved in important developments, both in field and in transformation processes.
The concepts related to sustainability have requested a review of production methods focusing greater attention on the environment and on the healthiness of productions for consumers.
For these reasons, this volume aims to discuss the technology developments in the field and in post-harvest. Particularly, precision farming is increasingly able to offer effective solutions for the operative management of the orchard, and automation and sensors applied to transformation processes are improving the possibility to better preserve the production quality by raising the control level, expanding the range of products (for instance the fresh-cut fruit and vegetable), reducing waste and saving costs.
The papers here published, cover 7 major topics:
Precision Agriculture in the orchard; Sensors and Automation for orchards and transformation processes; Logistics in the harvest and post-harvest; Technologies for the pre- and post-harvest; The measure of quality; Sustainability in fruit and vegetables cultivation; Liquid-filling.