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Maturity Standards and Harvesting Indices

Harvesting : Harvesting is detaching a commodity from the point of its origin. This point of origin may be an above ground plant part i.e. shoot eg. apple, tomato etc. or an underground plant part eg potato, carrot, etc. or in water i.e. harvesting of fish from a pond (not to be covered in this book).

Physiological Development

Fruits and vegetables can be divided into 3 stages based n their physiological development i.e. growth, maturation and senescence.

Growth: This generally refers to cell division, enlargement and differentiation ultimately giving a particular size, weight and volume to the commodity.

Maturation: It is initiated before the ceasation of growth and lasts till the onset of senescence.

Senescence: The stage when anabolic (synthetic) processes almost terminate and catabolic (degradative) processes are initiated and speeded up causing ageing and finally death of tissues.

Ripening: Stage that begins with the last stages of maturation and lasts till the beginning (first stage) of senescence. Ripening is a very important event in the life of a plant as it transforms a physiologically mature but inedible (or not preferred to be eaten) plant part into an edible, visually and olfactorily attractive and tasty commodity. Ripening marks the completion of developmental phase and is an irrevessible event.

India, one of the largest food producer countries (I in milk production, II in fruit and vegetable production and III in food grain production at world level), possesses the potential of being the biggest with the food and agricultural sector contributing around 26 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is a paradox that people of the country producing such huge quantities of food including fruits, vegetables, milk, cereals grains etc. are still suffering from many nutritional deficiencies in their diet, and even in some places, the stomachs of people remain unfilled for the want of food. The credit of this would predominantly go to the poor postharvest infrastructure as well as knowhow and accessibility to the facilities. All this makes us one among those countries having largest postharvest losses. The reduction of losses occuring during food handling, processing, storage, distribution and use would be an indirect way of increasing the food production and making the country self-sufficient in nutritional requirements.

Value chain analysis and its management is a strategic planning tool used in analyzing the value chain of a company or sector or a product. Initially, it was used to assess the process of a company or single unit. Then, it was visualized as a holistic and integrated framework in upgrading the activities of companies as a whole with the coordinating efforts of the various units or sub-systems. It is useful in improving the existing system or through introducing a new component in the system.

Value chain

The word ‘value chain’ was first introduced by Michael porter in his book ‘Comparative Advantage’ during 1985. Value chain is defined as “the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the different phases of production (involving a combination of physical transformation and the input of various producer services), delivery to final customers, and final disposal after use”.

Value chain comprises of full range of activities required to bring a product or service from the stage of conception, production and distribution to consumers (Kaplinsky and Morris, 2001). The study on value chain is intended to achieve comparative advantage through cost minimization and attaining consumer satisfaction. It is the preliminary step in the mapping of market (FAO, 2006).The value chain can be analyzed using Value Chain Analysis (VCA) through either quantitative or qualitative tools or both.

India has made considerable progress in improving its food security. The agricultural development strategy pursued in the country, particularly since the mid-sixties, is recognized and appreciated world over. The integration of agricultural research with quality education and a properly planned extension education system has been one of the fundamental foundations of this developmental strategy, which also led to revolutions in many other sectors of agriculture and allied enterprises. As a part of this strategy, several programmes of transfer of technology from research stations to farmers’ fields were launched in the country. These included National Demonstration Project, Lab to Land Programme, Operational Research Project and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (Farm Science Centers). The programmes were continuously reviewed from time to time and reformulated for their effectiveness. Presently the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) have been recognized as an effective link between agricultural research and extension system in the country (Venkatasubramanian et. al., 2009).

Krishi Vigyan Kendras (Farm Science Centers), an innovative science-based institution, were established mainly to impart vocational skill training to the farmers and field-level extension workers. The concept of vocational training in agriculture through KVK grew substantially due to greater demand for improved/agricultural technology by the farmers. The farmers require not only knowledge and understanding of the intricacy of technologies, but also progressively more and more skills in various complex agricultural operations for adoption on their farms. The effectiveness of the KVK was further enhanced by adding the activities related to on-farm testing and front-line demonstrations on major agricultural technologies.

Fisheries as a source of food, livelihood and income is probably as old as human civilization. Millions of men and women across the world, especially the developing world, are dependent on the sector. While fish capture in the open seas has generally been a male preserve conditioned by various social, cultural and economic factors; women also have significant contributions for sustaining household nutritional and income security. They have been engaged in fishing in inshore coastal waters, inland water bodies like rivers and ponds; and in post harvest activities like pre-processing, processing, drying, salting, and allied activities like marketing, net making and mending etc. With increasing volumes of fish coming from culture fisheries the participation of men and women in these activities are also increasing. Suffice to say that both men and women contribute to the overall growth and development of the fisheries sector. However, often women and their contributions tend to be marginalized in the fisheries development debate.

Women’s roles in fisheries

In the marine fisheries sector, fishing is largely a male preserve. Women rarely venture into the sae, conditioned by cultural and social taboos rather than by skill and endurance. However, the support from women in managing the households and in taking up subsistence or other livelihood activities related to fisheries activities that may actually go into the household income security need to be acknowledged. Studies show that women comprise about 46% of the labour force in small-scale capture fisheries-related activities (FAO, World Bank, IFAD, 2008). It is as high as 73% in Nigeria to a low of 4% in Mozambique. At least 50 % of the workforce in inland fisheries and 60 % of those marketing fish are women in Asia and West Africa.

The major challenges to any developing society are poverty and economic deprivation of its ruralpopulation.Eradication of poverty, the focus of all developmental efforts has remained a very complicated and serious concern among developing countries. Poverty is abysmal rooted covering several interlocked aspects such as lack of asset, under employment, uncertain and relatively unproductive employment, low remuneration, economic vulnerability, illiteracy, social disadvantage etc.

The rural areas were found to be more prone to poverty, even if it exists in urban areas also. The rural poor are perpetuating poverty and are the victims of the “vicious cycle of poverty”. Fishing communities in the coastal belts all over the world are also not an exception to this. Poverty in fishing communities is very common and is characterized by high population density, poor living conditions, lack of proper education and poor access to education and health care. Due to poor attention paid by the state, the infrastructure support like roads, electricity, good drinking water, markets etc also are be poor. Though efforts for reducing fishing pressure is taken by Government, scope for alternative employment opportunities are less. Thus those sector that are in engaged inthe world’s most dangerous occupations, are considered on par with SC/ST communities as far as India is concerned. The loss of a boat, gear or an active fisherman in the family can be tragic and lead to total financial deprivation of the family. Hence poverty and vulnerability in fishing communities is widely known but poorly addressed issue. As in rural farming sector, dependence of fishing communities on private moneylenders continues in many areas, especially for meeting emergent requirements. For various reasons, credit to these sections of the population has not been institutionalized.

The emergence of microfinance as an alternative financial delivery mechanism was a response to the failure of past efforts by government and international agencies effectively to provide financial services to the poor. But while considering micro finance programmes for fisheries sector, there should be special considerations that are unique to fishing communities and need special consideration. Instead of random payment of loans to target sectors and populations, efforts were taken for setting up and building local institutions that cater for the poor. This resulted in the materialization of microfinance institutions (MFIs) that serve the rural poor. MFIs initially started providing microcredit but have now extended their services to savings, insurance etc.

Fishery resources get depleted due to over fishing and one of the important management measure is to assess the fish stock, get update on the status of fishing and devise measures to mitigate fishery resource depletion. Recent examples of such management regulations in Indian fisheries are implementation of minimum legal size for fish catch, regulations brought out to control length and size of fishing fleet etc. With multi-dimensional expansion of fishing activities in India, it is necessary to analyse stock data critically bringing out suitable recommendations for fishery management. Stock assessment models play a vital role in management of fisheries.

Fish stock assessment is an evaluation of the state of the stock as relating to changes in the abundance or composition of the stock to changes in the amount of fishing. It involves the use of theories, laws, models and methods propagated by various scientists. There are two general approaches - population model (Schaefer, 1954, 1957) in which the stock is treated as a single entity subject to simple laws of population growth and the analytic approach (Ricker, 1958, 1975) which considers the abundance of the population as determined by the net effect of the growth, reproduction and mortality of individual members of the stock.

Stock assessment gives us the maximum sustainable yield (MSY), fish mortality, the input and output into the fisheries. The various environmental changes as they affect biological and physical features of a fish species, family or the group need to be assessed by using a model for its stock assessment and the basic data is got from research and commercial surveys.

Research survey is a detailed investigation of the fish based on the objectives. It involves taking the data on biological parameters of the fish (length, weight, sex etc), the food of the fish including the percentage composition. Other factors include the environmental features such as time, weather, position of catch, physicochemical parameters of the water body. Commercial survey involves taking note of basic and important information of commercial usefulness e.g length-weight frequencies, percentage composition etc which are strictly for economic purpose.

Trends in aquaculture and fisheries

Global fisheries have made rapid strides in recent years by establishing its strong hold over increasing food supply, generating job opportunities, raising nutritional level and earning foreign exchanges. These benefits become more important when placed in the context of current challenges in food production, nutritional security, social transitions and growing climate uncertainties. Fish and fishery products are the most traded food commodities in the world accounting for 1% of world merchandise trade in value terms representing more than 9% of total agricultural exports all over world (FAO, 2014). About 38% of the global fish production enters international trade in various forms and shapes, generating an export earning of nearly US$148.1billion with a record import at US$140.6 billion during 2014. Mostly the developing countries that account for over 60% of global fish catch, which has continued to expand at an average annual rate of 8.8% (FAO, 2009 & 2012) and play a major role in the global trade of fish and fish products contributing around 50% of fishery exports in value terms and more than 60% in quantity terms supplied by them (World Bank, 2011). At the same time, demand for fish products are likely to rise as a result of rising populations that are expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2050. Developing countries have a positive trade balance due to their increasing involvement in global fisheries trade. Developing country like India may have higher proportion of population growth but its impressive economic growth over the past two decades has resulted in steady increase in per capita income in real terms that in turn increases the purchasing power of people resulting in increasing demand for food to feed & ensure nutritional security of the population. As a result of which it brought inconsistency in fish consumption pattern across the coastal, marine and hill region.

Seafood has grown in consumption as it has become an important part of a diet. Simultaneously their safety is a rising concern for human health. However, seafood may contain harmful chemicals as well as biological agents that could pose health risks to consumers. Fishes are harvested from waters that are contaminated by varying amounts of industrial chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics. These contaminants may accumulate in fish at levels that can cause human health problems (e.g. carcinogenic and mutagenic effects).The seafood may also get contaminated with various pathogenic bacteria due to unhygienic handling practices, cross contamination of raw foods with cooked or ready-to eat foods, and lack of proper temperature control. Pathogenic bacteria can cause illness in human, either by infection or intoxication. Food borne infections are caused by swallowing live pathogens that grow within the body, usually in the intestinal tract. Intoxication is a condition caused by swallowing preformed toxins i.e. toxins produced by microorganisms in the food before it is eaten. Food can become contaminated at any point during production, distribution and preparation. Everyone along the production chain, from producer to consumer, has a role to ensure the safety of seafood.

Food Safety has been the buzz word in recent days as there are increasing consumer awareness on hazards present in food as well as the ombudsmen role played by independent media. Although regulatory regime across the world has taken proactive steps, in most of the cases it has been a knee-jerk reaction to the impending crisis. Defining the actual goal of food safety has been an arduous task as there are umpteen interrelated factors that influence the intended goals. Some of the definitions on food safety put forward by international agencies are as follows:

Fisheries sector plays an important role in food security and fish is now traded internationally. Shift in the trading policies (import and export) of seafood/aquatic products are happening at a rapid pace and consumption of seafood increased globally in substantial quantum. It is estimated that aquatic products export from Asian countries outcompetes earlier contributions to their importing partners year after year. Aquatic products include chordates, mollusc and arthropods from freshwater, brackish and marine system. They are nutrient rich diet and perishable too in nature and this prompted the industry to process the seafood in to different forms such as frozen, canned, cured and dried to extend its shelf life and recently value addition step being followed to improve the customer satisfaction. Nevertheless, the risk associated with the transboundary exchange of pathogens of seafood importance and its antibiotic resistance cannot be disregarded. Majority of the pathogens are not a native flora of fish. Each step in the aquatic products production chain either in the captured or cultured fisheries involves the contact of the seafood to the environment where they are grown, various implements used, contact surfaces, handlers, water etc. This post harvest handling makes the seafood contaminated with the pathogens of seafood importance such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp, Clostridium botulinum, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio cholerae, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Shigella sp, Aeromonas hydrophila, Plesiomonas shigelloides and viral pathogens such as hepatitis A virus etc. Among these pathogens, Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp, Staphylococcus aureus and Shigella spp are non-indigenous to the aquatic environment and others are indigenous to the aquatic environment. Depending on the nature of the environment (contaminated water source), feeding habits (filter feeders), season of harvest (summer season) are very crucial factors which cause seafood inherently contaminated in nature.

Indicator bacteria are types of bacteria that are used to provide an indication of poor hygiene, inadequate processing and or post - process contamination in seafood, water, feed, ice, equipments, workers, etc. Absence of indicator bacteria in seafood and aquaculture products provides a degree of quality assurance that the fishery products are hygienically good and have employed proper processing methods whereas their presence clearly indicates either severe problem or failure occurred during the processing, under-processing or post-process contamination. The indicator bacteria in fish and fishery products are mainly from enterobacteriaceae and coliforms group of bacteria. Traditionally, indicator micro-organisms have been used to suggest the presence of pathogens (Berg, 1978) and it includes the general microbial Process indicators, Faecal indicators, and Index and Model indicator organisms. The Process indicator is a group of organisms that indicates the efficacy of a processing and tested by Total Plate count (TPC)/ Total heterophilic count or total coliforms (MPN method). Fecal indicator is a group of organisms that indicates the presence of fecal contamination and could be tested for fecal coliforms, thermotolerant coliforms (MPN method) and E.coli (EMB and IMViC test). Index and model organisms are a group of organisms that indicates the presence of pathogens such as E.coli are an index for Salmonella and coliphages as model of human enteric viruses. The pathogenic indicator bacteria viz., Coliforms, Fecal coliforms, E.coli, Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Citrobacter, Fecal Streptococci, Sulphite reducing clostridia, Clostridium perfringens, Bifidobacteria, Bacteriophages, coliphages and Bacteroides fragilis etc., are associated with food poisoning. In addition, pathogenic viruses, protozoa and parasites are also present in fecal matter. Fecal contamination is mainly from sewage of human source, livestock, poultry manure, pets and wildlife. Infection caused by these pathogens mainly depend on the level of microbial load.

The planet earth harbors a total population of 7,530,687,482 (as on 7^th September 2017 at 1345hrs) in which Asia and Africa share 4,486,207,286 and 1,252,251,830, respectively. In majority of the countries in Asia and Africa surveillance programs for detection and source tracking of human health hazard bacteria in foods is scant and in some cases do not exist. Hence, the task is much more complicated especially catering to needs of food, nutritional security and microbial safety of foods of more than 5,738,459,116 or 76.2 % of the total population of the world. The continued occurrence of foodborne illness is not evidence of the failure of our food safety system. In fact, many of our prevention and control efforts have been and continue to be highly effective. In advanced countries like US where food supply is one of the safest in the world, however, significant food borne illness continues do occur. Despite great strides in the area of microbiological food safety, much remains to be done.

Food-borne disease outbreaks are defined as the occurrence of 2 or more cases of a similar illness resulting from ingestion of a common food or observed number of cases of a particular disease exceeds the expected number. These can be confirmed (when at least one causal agent is identified) or suspected (based on clinical and epidemiological information). Although most cases are sporadic, these diseases draw attention to themselves due to outbreaks, thorough investigation of which can help in identifying control measures.Annual burden of foodborne diseases in the WHO South- East Asia Region includes more than: 150 million illness, 175 000 deaths, 12 million DALYs (Source: FERG Report 2010).

Food is an important item in the life of consumer as it has a direct bearing on the sustenance of life. The food safety or over concern on the health hazards was not considered as an issue until recently, particularly in the developing countries. This clearly indicates the shift in citizen’s mind from availability of food to quality of food. This along with the changes in the food habits and type of products available in the market for his consumption, the incidence of food borne illness across the globe and his concern for his health contributed significantly to the development of food safety in the food arena.

Until recently food safety domain and regulation were confined to the government and its regulatory machinery. The globalisation of food and food products and the passage of food across international borders paved way for the increased food safety concern across the globe and stressed the need for ensuring quality and safety of food in international trade. The incidence of food borne illness increased with increase in the appearance of more and more derived products started in the market (Sivapalasingam, Friedman, Cohen, & Tauxe, 2004; Tauxe, Doyle, Kuchenmüller, Schlundt, & Stein, 2010). The production along the value chain, from primary production to the retailing happen in the world under different agroclimate conditions, in varied production lines from sinle handler to community production to large scale mechanised production and such a diversity led to concerns in the food safety system (McCullough, Prabhu, & Kostas, 2008). The individual operators in the chain operates a food safety management system based on the availablity and to suit his requirement based on the basic principles laid down by natinal and International bodies like Codex Alimentarius Commission. Now when you see the market at large, has plenty of FSMS system which includes both from the governmental and private sectors. Therefore, Food Safety Management System (FSMS) is the result of the implementation of available and relevant quality assurance guidelines and standards availble and in the primary production it could be the implementation of good practices including good hygienic proactices, good aquacultural priactices which have proved effective in the food sector. On the production and trade sector this may include good manufacturing practices, good hygienic practices, probably including Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. In the process the FSMS may include essentially all the activites from equipment, procedures, programs, tools, organizational measures, and people necessary to execute the control and assuranceactivities aimed at ensuring chemical and microbial safety of fresh produce.

The term nanotechnology was coined by Prof Taniguchi, Japan in 1974 during conference of the Japanese Society of Precision Engineering. Nano technology is a domain of scientific activity oriented on synthesis, characterization, application of devices and materials and technical systems which functions at nano structures having 1 to 100 nm size. Prof R. Feynman American Physicist and Nobel Prize winner was the first person pointed out the importance and promising outlook for nano particles during his lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom. An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics,” delivered on December 29th 1959 at the California Institute of Technology. He pointed out that “... when we have some control of the arrangement of things on a small scale we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have, and of different things that we can do ... The problems of chemistry and biologycan be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed”. Later scientists realized the potential of nano particulate materials during the last decade has tremendous advancement in nano research. Governments and private sectors of the world invested huge sums to reap the benefits from novel applications of nano materials.

Nanotechnology: The principle of nano technology is that the material with known properties and functions at normal size exhibit different behaviour and functions at nano scale. By decreasing the size of the material the surface area per unit material will increase enormously and this helps greater interactions with reactive sites. Nano technology implied that the process of fabricating and/ or controlling the material sized between 1 to 100nm.

Fishing is the most energy-intensive food production method in the world today and depends almost completely on internal combustion engines based on oil fuels. Energy is spent during the design, construction and operation of vessels. Energy loss can take place during different stages such as design, construction, operation and maintenance of boats and at harbor.

The energy costs for a particular fishery is determined principally by the technology in use, the local economic conditions, including taxes, subsidies, labour cost and operational cost. (O. Gulbrandson, FAO, 2012)

Only about one-third of the energy generated by the engine reaches the propeller and, in the case of a small trawler, only one-third of this is actually spent on useful work such as pulling the net.

The approximate distribution of energy created from the burning of fuel.

Fisheries comprise a major economic activity within complex interactions between human beings and water - ‘the first among equals’ of the natural resources (Ahmed, 1992). Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined. In the past three decades, employment in fisheries and aquaculture has grown at a higher rate than the growth of world population. The fishery engineering is evolving as an important domain in view of depleting stocks on both pre and post-harvest scenarios. It will also aid in fish processing technologies, optimizing energy and water use in seafood industries, mitigating climate change related issues and reducing carbon foot print. It is important to explore novel ways to obtain, quantify, and integrate industry responses to declining fishing stocks and increasing management regulations into fishery - and ecosystem-based management advice. The technological interventions help to reduce the wastage of fishes, which is otherwise a highly perishable commodity by preservation technologies and converting it into value added products with higher shelf life. Use of appropriate technologies along the fish value chain will help in producing better quality products and fetch more markets and higher price.

Major areas of technological interventions in the field of fishery engineering cover design and development of fish processing equipment and machineries, energy efficient and eco-friendly solar fish dryers, fuel efficient fishing vessels and fiberglass canoes, indigenous electronic instruments for application in harvest and post-harvest technology of fish, quality improvement of Indian fishing fleet and energy and water optimization techniques for fish processing industries. Focused areas include development of cost effective solar dryers with LPG, biomass, Infra-Red or electrical back-up heating systems, fish de-scaling machines, Fish freshness sensor etc.

Introduction

Fish symbolizes as prosperity and fertility of the region rather than for its food and nutritional security in many parts of the world. The abundant inland waters resources such as reservoirs, rivers and wetlands contribute to meet the food and nutritional security of a nation. The rich diversity of freshwater fish fauna supplements as a quality animal source protein, macro and micro nutrients for the health benefits of all age group of human population. Hence, the fishery activities such as fish catch and production enhancement from inland water resources are emphasized to scale up to meet the growing demand. The world fish production through inland capture fisheries has increased from 10.5 million tons in 2009 to 11.9 tons in 2014. The utilization of the existing vast inland resources through technical interventions would impact on food and nutritional security and livelihood of the fishers and rural masses of the developing countries.

Introduction

Fisheries and aquaculture are important source of food, nutrition and livelihood for millions of people around the world. Aquaculture is the fastest growing food-production sector in the global aquaculture with production of 73.8 Million tonnes in 2014 (FAO, 2016) expanding into new directions, intensifying and diversifying. A persistent goal of global aquaculture is to maximize the efficiency of production to optimize profitability.

Infectious diseases pose of the most significant threats to successful aquaculture. Intensively cultured fish and shellfish are susceptible to infectious agents. The losses due to shrimp diseases in India is valued at Rs. 10, 221 million. Globally, the yield loss due to diseases in aquaculture is estimated to be $ 6 billion. A variety of antimicrobial and chemical treatments have been used for the control and treatment of bacterial diseases in aquaculture systems. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria due to application of antibiotics in aquaculture and the toxic nature of chemicals led to the search for alternatives for the control of infection. Here, we discuss the several alternatives to antibiotics that have been successfully used in aquaculture.