eChapters

Introduction

Seafood provides about 25% of the global intake of animal protein and fetches a huge economy for developing nations. Many challenges concerning food safety and quality exist due to globalization and liberalization of the global f ish trade. International food safety regulatory bodies such as WTO and CAC through SPS and TBT Agreements work on ensuring food safety and quality. Adoption of risk-based analysis and implementation of the HACCP system are encouraged to maintain high seafood safety standards. International regulatory bodies set maximum residual limits for various environmental pollutants and contaminants to ensure consumer safety. Consumer education programs play important role to enhance awareness and improve transparency in the seafood supply chain. Internationally traded seafood products therefore need to meet the standards prescribed for food safety and quality requirements. In case of non-conformance, they could be detained, rejected and destroyed.

The global demand on seafood quality and safety requirement and the complexities of seafood supply chain make difficulty to ensure authenticity and traceability of seaood products in the market. Most seafood is exported from the country where it is caught while part of it via. a third country. Seafood pass-through complex supply chains involving, capture/culture, transshipment, processing, packaging, wholesale, retailing, and consumer. The global trade of seafood has led to a significant concern associated with seafood fraud.

12.1. Seafood Fraud

Seafood fraud is the practice of providing misleading information to the consumers about their product for financial gain. There are nine types of seafood fraud, which include species substitution, fishery substitution, IUU substitution, species adulteration, chain of custody abuse, catch method fraud, undeclared product extension, modern day slavery, and animal welfare

Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most versatile crops having the highest genetic yield potential among cereals and wider adaptability under varied agro-climatic conditions rightly earning it the name of ‘the queen of cereals’. Maize is cultivated in all agricultural areas around the world and is an economically significant crop for all human population. It is grown from 58⁰ L north to 40⁰ L south and extends from the sea level up to an altitude of above 3,800 m; covering regions with rainfall varying from 250 to 10,000 mm (Hallauer and Miranda, 1988). Globally, maize occupies an area of about 184.0 million ha with production of 1065 million tons and productivity of 55.2 q/ha (FAOSTAT, 2014). It is the third most important cereal crop and a major source of energy, protein and other nutrients for human and livestock in the world (Jompuk et al., 2011). India is the second most important maize growing country in Asia, and now ranks as the world’s fifth largest consumer of maize. It is an important cereal crop in India covering an area of 9.42 million ha with a production of 24.35 million tonnes and productivity 25.83 q/ha (Anonymous, 2015). Maize is cultivated in the country throughout the year mostly during rainy or Kharif season (June to September, 80%) followed by winter or Rabi (November to April,18%) and spring (February to May, 2%) for various purposes including grain, fodder, green cobs, sweet corn, baby corn and popcorn.

There is need to find better ways and solutions to mitigate future agricultural challenges toward increasing productivity across the crops and equip them with the desirable genes for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and to mitigate the impact of climate change and also to make them nutritionally superior. Here comes “Plant Genomics”—a newly evolved discipline of plant sciences—targeting to decode, characterize, and study the genetic composition, structures, organizations, functions, and interactions/networks of all plant genes in a genome-wide scale. Being evolved from plant molecular genetics, biology, and biotechnology, plant genomics represents the key sub- divisions of structural, functional, comparative, evolutionary, physiological, and genetical genomics. Its development and advances, however, are tightly interconnected with plant science sub-disciplines, such as proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, phenomics, metagenomics, transgenomics, breeding-assisted genomics, bioinformatics and system biology as well as modern instrumentation and robotics sciences.

Plant genomics is a recent convergence of many sciences. Simply stated “Genomics” is the new science that deals with the discovery and noting of all the sequences in the entire genome of a particular organism. The genome can be defined as the complete set of genes inside a cell. Genomics, is, therefore, the study of the genetic make-up of organisms. Determining the genomic sequence, however, is only the beginning of genomics. Once this is done, the genomic sequence is used to study the function of the numerous genes (functional genomics), to compare the genes in one organism with those of another (comparative genomics), or to generate the 3-D structure of one or more proteins from each protein family, thus offering clues to their function (structural genomics). In crop agriculture, the main purpose of the application of genomics is to gain a better understanding of the whole genome of plants. Agronomically important genes may be identified and targeted to produce more nutritious and safe food while at the same time preserving the environment. Genomics is an entry point for looking at the other ‘omics’ sciences. The information in the genes of an organism, its genotype, is largely responsible for the final physical makeup of the organism, referred to as the “phenotype”. However, the environment also has some influence on the phenotype. DNA in the genome is only one aspect of the complex mechanism that keeps an organism running – so decoding the DNA is one step towards understanding the process. However, by itself, it does not specify everything that happens within the organism. The basic flow of genetic information in a cell is as follows. The DNA is transcribed or copied into a form known as “RNA”. The complete set of RNA (also known as its transcriptome) is subject to some editing (cutting and pasting) to become messenger-RNA, which carries information to the ribosome, the protein factory of the cell, which then translates the message into protein.

• Food science deals with the physical, chemical, and biological properties of foods as they relate to stability, cost, quality, processing, safety, nutritive value, wholesomeness, and convenience.
• Food science is a branch of biological science and an interdisciplinary subject involving primarily microbiology, chemistry, biology, and engineering.
• Food chemistry, a major aspect of food science, deals with the composition and properties of food and the chemical changes it undergoes during handling, processing, and storage.
• Food chemistry is intimately related to chemistry, biochemistry, physiological chemistry, botany, zoology, and molecular biology.
• Nonenzymic browning involves reaction of carbonyl compounds, which can arise from existing reducing sugars or from diverse reactions, such as oxidation of ascorbic acid, hydrolysis of starch, or oxidation of lipids.

Some chemical and biochemical reactions that can lead to alteration of food quality or safety

Introduction
The identification of agricultural crops with accuracy determines how precision farming works and affects biodiversity protection and food safety standards in addition to pest control practices. In modern agricultural practice, crop species identification relies on the combination of three traditional methods: morphological characteristics and biochemical markers, and remote-sensing technologies. These methods face a large variety of constraints such as environmental differences, high costs, and time-consuming operations. Genome-editing tools, especially CRISPR, a modern molecular identification tool for crops that increases efficiency and accuracy, have largely solved the problems traditional methods faced. Identifying agricultural crops correctly is an essential operation for resource management to be used efficiently in the hope that businesses meet regulatory standards and do their share in stopping trade-related fraudulent activities with incorrect labeling. The early and exact identification process helps pest and disease control because different crop species need different levels of resistance management (Rahayu et al., 2025). A reliable identification methodology remains important because sustainable agricultural practices and climate-ready crop varieties reach higher popularity in current times. The identification method based on morphological classification takes too much time and gets misdirected because of environmental conditions (Mascellino et al., 2024). High-resolution satellite data together with advanced computational tools needed for remote sensing-based identification cannot easily be accessed by small-scale farmers (Sharma et al., 2024).
The high specific identification of crop species becomes achievable through CRISPR-based technology which utilizes genetic markers as its primary feature. CRISPR enables fast and exact and affordable crop classification through its ability to detect and analyze specific genetic patterns. The accuracy of crop identification improves while real-time evaluation of plant diversity alongside disease. Alert traits becomes achievable through this method (Kanapiya et al., 2024). CRISPR-based biosensors have experienced recent advancements that enabled portable field-deployable identification tools which eliminate the need for complex laboratory setups (Lagener et al., 2025). Crop monitoring and breeding programs will undergo revolution through CRISPR technology integration in agricultural systems which will support the creation of climate-adaptive highyield crop varieties.
The evolution of CRISPR application research demonstrates its expanding function in farming efficiency together with food security establishment. The chapter explores CRISPR-based methods’ identification potential for crops using an evaluation of their superiority over conventional identification techniques and their expected contributions to future agricultural developments

Summary

The indiscriminate use of pesticides and their persistence in the environment enhances the residue levels in meat, dairy products, eggs and food crops, consequently adversely affecting the human health (Akhtar, 1985). In India millions of tons of pesticides are applied to the agricultural fields to increase the productivity for compensation of the nutritional requirements of increasing population from the same land resources. It was the advent of green revolution that really spurred the growth of pesticide industry. Several reports published reveal that a large amount of organochlorine pesticides is present in vegetables, fruits and soft drinks besides other pesticides compared to World Health Organization (WHO) standards (Martin and Duggan, 1968; Corneliussen, 1969; Ulmann, 1972; Hildebrandt et al., 1986). Organochlorine pesticide persistence, biomagnification and toxicity adversely affect the ecological systems (Khanna et al., 2002). There are a large number of different types of pesticides which differ in their mechanisms of action. Some pesticides are very acutely toxic in humans, while others have low acute toxicity but may cause long term health effects in chronically exposed individuals. Each pesticide class has to be considered individually when predicting effects. Therefore, considering organochlorine pesticides induced disruption of body functions and possibly the involvement of free radicals is cardinal to present study.

Introduction

Food is an important contributor to human well being and is essential for sustaining life. From this point of view food is expected to contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, protein fat, vitamins and other essential minerals which support life. The food production initially started for individual sustenance which slowly developed in to a community requirement necessitating the involvement of man and machinery for various activities concerned with food. The progress from famine in many parts of the world to the level of self-sufficiency and the role of science and agriculture have been absolutely significant in many parts of the world. India is no exception and the green revolution during the post 1960s and the succeeding blue and white revolution ensured the self-sufficiency in India.

Of late food acts as a vehicle for inclusion of hazard in food meant for human consumption. According to Grunert (2005), factors responsible for the alarmingly higher rate of concern by public include significantly higher number of food scares in public domain, critical understanding of production and processing of certain food products sold in the market as well as the diversified food choices of the consumers in different parts of the world. Besides, the increased awareness of the consumers on food related health issues also have its share in the increased concern on food at large.

Presently food is considered as a commodity which crosses international border concurrent with the human movement and hence quality has become a major concern. The traditional food is getting replaced with value added products, particularly ready to cook, ready to eat, partially cooked products, etc. consequent to life style changes. In order to meet the demand of the trade, the conventional processing is getting replaced by community processing or industrial processing with increased number of players in the primary production, processing, transportation and other value chain activities prompting larger product control. In the process, consumers are exposed to a variety of products produced as business ventures in modern food production systems needing efficient quality control and quality assurance to tackle the issues of quality. The increased incidence of hazards in both raw materials and final products consequent to the absence or inappropriate production schedule calls for increased food safety concerns. Besides the shelf-life of the products, addition of chemicals during the production also add to the concern.

Maize is one of the most important cereal crops of the world. Being a C₄ plant, it is physiologically more efficient than rice, wheat and other important cereal crops which belong to C₃ category. In Punjab, traditionally, maize is grown during Kharif season but from last few years the area under spring maize is increasing because its cultivation is highly profitable and commercially viable after harvesting of potato crop. No doubt, Punjab has been the leading state in contributing to the national food security but simultaneously paddy-wheat rotation resulted in depletion of underground water, deterioration in soil health and environmental pollution. These problems need to be addressed for the sustainability of these natural resources and at the same time meeting the food grain production for the ever-increasing human population. Under such circumstances, maize crop is a viable alternative to replace some area occupied by rice and can help in breaking rice–wheat dominant cropping pattern in the state. Promising maize hybrids possessing high grain yield potential and offering comparable economic returns to the farmers are available with Punjab Agricultural University as well as with the private sector.

In Punjab, maize is commonly used in the form of chapatis, boiled or roasted green cob, breakfast food like cornflakes, popped grains etc. Maize chapatis are used as a delicacy with saag. The high carotene content of yellow grained maize is considered very useful in imparting yellow colour to egg yolk. Therefore, a substantial quantity of maize grain is utilized as an important ingredient of animal/ poultry feed industry. The use of maize grains for such purposes is going to increase as poultry and dairy industries are expanding. Maize plant is extensively used as green as well as dry fodder. The digestibility of maize fodder is better than sorghum, bajra and other non- legume forage crops. Maize plant does not have any anti quality factor hence can be fed to cattle at any stage. Maize can be utilized as an industrial raw material for number of industries viz., starch, ethanol, rubber, paper, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals etc. Quality Protein Maize (QPM) can be promoted for nutritional security of poor masses whereas pop corn, baby corn and sweet corn can help in increasing the farm income due to high market value. In Punjab, major industries which are utilizing maize are The Sukhjit Starch & Chemical Limited, Kapurthala, and M/s Field Fresh Food Pvt. Ltd, Ladhowal, Ludhiana.

Introduction

Many post-harvest treatments are applied to horticultural crops, either to maintain the quality (taste, colour, flavour, texture) or improve the visual appeal. Most important of these treatments are temperature management including the cold chain where the temperature of the crop is reduced rapidly and stabilize temperature after harvesting. Exposing the crop to high or low temperature and application of chemicals after harvest helps in managing/ prevent pest and diseases and sprouting occurrence respectively.

Harvested produce must be handled with care at every stage to avoid the mechanical damage and subsequent fungal/bacterial infection. Adopting appropriate post-harvest handling operation will minimize the all ill effects of post-harvest (Fig. 1).

Charts and graphs are essential tools for visualizing data and presenting information in a clear and comprehensible manner. They transform raw data into visual representations, making complex data easier to understand, analyze, and communicate. Various types of charts and graphs serve different purposes and are chosen based on the nature of the data and the message intended to be conveyed.

Historical Background and Evolution

The use of charts and graphs dates back centuries, evolving alongside advancements in mathematics, statistics, and technology.

Early Developments

Ancient Civilizations: Early forms of data visualization can be traced back to ancient civilizations. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Babylonian cuneiform tablets included basic graphical representations of information.

William Playfair (1759-1823): Often considered the father of statistical graphics, Playfair introduced several fundamental chart types, including the bar chart, line chart, pie chart, and circle chart, in his works such as “The Commercial and Political Atlas” (1786) and “The Statistical Breviary” (1801).

Hormones are a group of biochemical messengers that assist in transmitting signals from one part of an organism to another. The term “hormone” was first coined by Ernest Starling in 1905 after the discovery of secretin, a chemical produced in the small intestine that regulates pancreatic secretions. In 1937 Went and Thimann defined hormones as “a substance which, produced in any one part of an organism, is transferred to another part and there influences a specific physiological process”. Since then hormones are also known as chemical messengers. These intercellular messengers are produced by specialized cells of endocrine glands, generally called effectors and released into the bloodstream thereby assisting in the regulation of physiological processes in target cells. Hormones assist in the regulation of a plethora of cell functions such as maintaining homeostasis, metabolism of biomolecules, growth, and reproductive function, and controlling blood pressure and glucose levels that are essential in orchestrating an intricate body- balance. The pituitary, thyroid, pancreas, adrenal, parathyroid, and gonads (testis and ovary in males and females respectively) produce hormones. Apart from these endocrine glands, few other organs such as the kidney, heart, and liver are also involved in hormone production. The pituitary gland

Summary

Researchers face a series of similar-yet unique problems to isolate proteins. To solve these they must have dip knowledge to select an appropriate technique. The mechanism, to study the way in which a living system works, is necessary to dismantle the machine and to isolate the component parts so that they may be studied, separately and in their interaction with other parts. The knowledge that is gained in this way may be put to practical use, for example, in the design of medicines, diagnostics, pesticides, or industrial processes. In every case a pure protein is desirable as impurities may either be misleading, dangerous or unproductive, respectively. Protein isolation is, therefore, a very common, almost central, procedure in biotechnology. The purpose of this chapter is thus to fill the beginners with techniques relevant to protein isolation, hopefully to improve their knowledge.

India is bestowed with huge production of fruits, vegetables, cereals, millets, sugarcane along with meat production, milk production, fish production and poultry. Despite such a huge production in India, owing to perishable nature of these produce around 25-30 percent of the produce is being lost as post harvest loss. The one important reason for this may be the production of the crops are season specific and during the peak season the production is more while demand for consumption is less. It may be possible to cut down these losses to great extent, if these produces may be transported from the produces states to those who are not producing due to agro-climatic reasons. So for making transportation of the perishable a successful venture in decreasing post harvest loss, there must be proper cool chain management facilities both at producing site as well as marketing place. The aim of the cool chain management must be to keep the produce in saleable condition during entire storage periods. Some products are stored for short period whereas fresh fruits, vegetables require cold storage. Foods before keeping into the storage room need some pre-storage treatments for better results.

Introduction
In the contemporary digital era, Information Technology (IT) has emerged as a pivotal tool in transforming business and governance processes, enabling greater efficiency, transparency, and innovation. The process transformation facilitate by IT is not merely a technical upgrade but a fundamental rethinking of how organizations operate, deliver services, and interact with stakeholders. This transformation affects every facet of an organization, from internal workflows to customer engagement, and extends to how governments interact with citizens. Integrating IT into processes fosters greater flexibility, scalability, and adaptability, allowing organisations to respond swiftly to changing environments and demands.

(I) Digestion of Feed

In feed, carbohydrate is the main nutritive substance which is in the form of insoluble large particles. For intestinal absorption by blood and lymph, it is necessary to be digested as small and simple particles. For example, carbohydrate found in the form of starch or glycogen is not absorbed as such and is only absorbed when it is converted into the simple soluble monosaccharide form. Similarly, proteins present in the feed are also not absorbed untill they are digested into simple forms of aminoacids (Fig. 27, Fig. 28, Fig. 29, Fig. 30). Piglets are exceptions, as the newly born piglets obtain colostrum from their mother. Colostrum is rich in gamma immunoglobulins. This immunoglobulin is abosrbed as such without digestion by pinocytosis. It gives immunity to save the new piglets from many diseases. For this reason, colostrum suckling is necessary for new piglets. The process of pinocytosis occur only few days after birth and it  stops after some time. Fat occurs in the form of triglycerides in the feed. For absorption of the fat, it is necessary to be converted into its simple forms such as glycerol, free fatty acids or in the form of monoglycerides.

    1.    Life blood of food companies are
        a)    Existing products    b)    New Products
        c)     New packaging material    d)     Food technologists
    2.    New Products are developed to meet
        a)    Health & Nutritional requirements
        b)    Environmental & Social requirements
        c)     Convenience & handling
        d)     All
    3.    What are the characteristics of a line extension in a variant of an established line of food products 
        a)    Little research    
        b)    Minimum manufacturing changes
        c)     No change in logistics and supply chain
        d)     All
    4.    The following one is not a characteristic of new product development through line extension
        a)    New purchasing skills
        b)    No change in logistics and supply chain
        c)     No change in storage of RM &PM
        d)     Minimum R&D

1. INTRODUCTION

Many food components are encapsulated and stabilized by nature inside plant cells, but, with the growth in use of functional ingredients and product fortification with vitamins, antioxidants and nature-identical synthetic compounds, there is a need to stabilize and protect these ingredients from the rigours of processing and degradation during storage.

Many food products whose development was thought to be technically unfeasible are possible today because of the wide availability of encapsulated ingredients. Such ingredients are products of a process that totally envelops the ingredient in a coating or ‘capsule’ thereby conferring many useful and otherwise unusual properties to the original ingredients.

Encapsulation is a technique that is applied to preserve and/or protect numerous ingredients. In the flavour industry, the encapsulation process is used chiefly to convert liquid flavour materials to free-flowing, dried powdered products. In a broad sense, encapsulation technology includes the coating of minute particles of ingredients (e.g., acidulants, fats, and flavours) as well as whole ingredients (raisins, nuts, and confectionery products) that may be accomplished by microencapsulation and macro-coating techniques, respectively.

ABSTRACT

Green packaging is a technique used to develop sustainable and eco-friendly packaging materials. In this review paper we have examined the data currently available on the use of plant by-products and plant extract in the development of green packaging. The use of plant fibres is especially beneficial because they often contain a high concentration of bioactive compounds. These compounds lend a preservative effect to the packaging material. Further we have also discussed the degradability of such packaging and the additives which need to be added in order to enhance their utility. Lastly, we have examined the possible applications of green packaging in the food industry.

Keywords:GreenPackaging,Plantby-products,Fruitfibres,Biodegradability, Bioactive compounds, Nanocomposites, Renewable resources, Biopolymers

Introduction

The word ‘Sericulture’ is derived from the Greek word ‘sericos’ meaning ‘silk’ and the English ‘culture’ meaning ‘rearing’. It refers to the mass scale rearing of silkworm for obtaining silk from them. Mulberry sericulture involves production of silk using mulberry as the host plant. Silk is known as Resham in Hindi, Soie in French, Seide in German, Seda in Spanish, Seta in Italian, Tsi in Chinese, Soi in Korean, Knu in Japanese, Solk in Russian etc. It is regarded the queen of textiles as it is most elegant among all the  textile fibers with unparalleled grandeur, natural sheen, inherent affinity for dyes, high absorbance, light weight with soft touch and high durability.