The effect of post harvest handling on selected native food plants

A commercial issue currently facing native plant food producers and food processors, and identified by the industry itself, is that of delivering quality products consistently and at reasonable cost to end users based on a sound food technology and nutrition platform. A literature survey carried out in July 2001 by the DPI&F’s Centre for Food Technology, Brisbane in collaboration with the University of Queensland to collect the latest information at that time on the functional food market as it pertained to native food plants, indicated that little or no work had been published on this topic. This project addresses two key RIRDC sub program strategies: to identify and evaluate processes or products with prospects of commercial viability and to assist in the development of integrated production, harvesting, processing and marketing systems. This project proposal also reflects a key RIRDC R&D issue for 2002-2003; that of linking with prospective members of the value chain. The purpose of this project was to obtain chemical data on the post harvest stability of functional nutritional components (bio actives) in commercially available, hand harvested bush tomato and Kakadu plum. The project concentrated on evaluating bioactive stability as a measure of ingredient quality.