eChapters

Fraudulent substitution of meat is the adulteration or mixing of the inferior or cheaper quality meat into superior quality meat. The first case of fraudulent substitution was recorded in thirteenth century A.D. at Florence in Italy. A common fraud in the meat industry in which uninspected meat is substituted for meat that has undergone inspection and been branded as satisfactory. The other frauds are the substitution of meat of another species, e.g. horse for beef especially in Britain and Ireland, beef in kangaroo meat in Australia, cat for chicken or rabbit, goat meat for mutton, mutton for venison, dog meat and cat meat for chevon in other countries including India. As per an estimate about 25-30% of meat sold in India is adulterated. These practices are more common in comminuted meat products. These illegal practices are punishable under PFA act 1955. The choice of method to be applied is depend on the need or condition of meat recovered.

Introduction

Food fraud is not new it can be traced back to ancient Rome and Athens, where regulations prohibiting the adulteration of beverages with flavours and colours were in place. It exists since the food trade has been started. Food fraud affects all food supply chains, thus the entire food sector. Due to globalisation and the increasing complexity of supply lines, food supply chains are becoming more vulnerable to food fraud (Robson et al., 2021a). A fraud is “any act or omission relating to the use or presentation of false, incorrect, or incomplete statements or documents, or non disclosure of information in violation of a specific obligation, and any other illegal activity affecting the financial interests” (EU No. 2017/1371).

Physico-chemical and microbiological quality of meat and aquatic food and food products gives its overall safety and quality status as a food. The physico-chemical and microbiological qualities of raw material have great importance on the product development. It also affects the shelf life of the raw material as well as final product.

Fresh meat is a type of meat which has not been subjected to any processing whereas raw meat is a fresh meat which has undergone freezing. The qualities of fresh meat are important as far as merchandiser, purchaser and consumers are concerned and it is also important for adaptability in further processing. The important quality parameters of fresh meat are:

A variety of glassware like burettes, pipettes, measuring cylinders, flasks, separating funnel etc. are used for experimental purposes in a laboratory. All of these need to be used and handled correctly, otherwise the chances of experimental error and damage to the glassware increase significantly. Being made of glass, they need special care while washing and using in experiments because even a minor mistake in handling of glassware may result in breakage of the apparatus. With this precautionary note, let us discuss about some of the specific glassware used in the laboratories.

Burette

Burette is a long graduated glass tube with a stopcock at one end for delivering a known/desired volume of a liquid, especially in titration experiments. It contains a stopcock at the lower end and a tapered capillary tube as the stopcock’s outlet. The flow rate of liquid from the tub stopcock’s outlet can be controlled with the help of stopcock valve. Burette is used for measuring the volume of a solution/chemical added in a quantitative (titrimetric) estimation experiment.

Procedure of using a Burette

The burette reading must be noted before and after delivering the chemical/ solution from the burette. The difference in these two readings is the volume of the chemical/solution released out of the burette. The solution should be released slowly/drop-by-drop to avoid any experimental error/mistake. If the solution/chemical is allowed to pour out too fast, the wall of the burette will not drain properly and some liquid may remain sticking to the surface of the walls. Moreover, excessive amount of chemical may be released/dropped during the experiment, particularly during the titration experiment wherein we need to know the exact amount of acid/base needed to get neutralization point. Thus, any minor mistake may lead to get a faulty reading. The measuring capacity of a burette usually used in a laboratory is 50 mL.

Fº value: It is used to express F-value when z =10ºC / 18ºF and the temperature is 121.1ºC. It is the number of minutes at a specific temperature (250ºC) required to destroy or kill a stated number of microorganisms and has specific z-value. It is also called reference value. 

12.1    Shelf Life
    
12.2    Pre-Treatments Vs. Shelf Life/Storage (Hot Water, Fungicides, Coatings and other Chemicals)
    
12.3    Surface Coatings
    
12.4    1-MCP Gas Exposure
    
12.5    Use of Botanicals
    
12.6    Other Chemicals/Methods
    
12.7    Evaporative Cool Storage
    
12.8    Modified Atmosphere Storage (MAS)
    
12.9    Controlled Atmosphere Storage (CAS)
    
12.10    Vacuum Packaging
    
12.11    Hypobaric Storage
    
12.12    Irradiation
    
12.13    Chilling Injury (CI)

The growing chemicalization of milk presents a great challenge to the dairy industry. A number of chemical compounds get entry into milk, intentionally or un-intentionally, through their direct or indirect usage for crop, animal; or dairy husbandry practices, as environmental contamination. Several of these contaminants may be naturally present on grazing grass or use as pesticides for green fodder or they may get entry through use of compounded animal feeds. These eventually get excreted into milk as residues and pose problems to food safety. The risk of health hazards arises from veterinary drugs, residual pesticides, heavy metals, detergents and micotoxins etc. It is therefore, become necessary to detect these contaminants in order to make food safe for human consumption.

Detection of Aflatoxin M 1 in Milk

Material requirements : Glass column(30 cm x 1 cm), Silica gel (63-200 µg particle size), volumetric flasks, beakers, micro pipette, HPLC equipment fitted with C 18 column(25 cm x 4.6 mm) and fluorescence detector.

Reagents: Sodium chloride solution (400g in 1000ml water), acetonitrile/water mixture (25:75), sodium sulphsate, chloroform, toluene/acetic acid mixture (9:1), acetonitrile/diethyle ether/hexane mixture (1:3:6), chloroform/acetone mixture (8:2), n-hexane and aflatoxin standard ampule.

Preparation of stock solution : Transfer contents from 2.5ml or 0.5ml ampoule, quantitatively, to 25ml or 50ml volumetric flask respectively. Rinse ampoule with small quantities of chloroform and collect rinsing into flask. Makeup the volume with chloroform, mix well and store at 5º C or below. These solutions will contain 1 µg per ml aflatoxin M1.

Working solution : Transfer 0.5ml of stock solution to a 10ml conical flask. Evaporate contents to dryness using inert gas. Dissolve residue in 10ml of acetonitrile/water mixture. Prepare series of dilutions containing 0.0025, 0.005, 0.01 and 0.025 µg/ml aflatoxin. Similarly treat 5ml of stock solution to give a concentration of 0.5 µg/ml.

15.1    Banana Chips/Crisps
    
15.2    Banana Puree/Pulp
    
15.3    Banana Flour
    
15.4    Banana Powder
    
15.5    Banana Flakes
    
15.6    Banana Figs or Dehydrated Banana
    
15.7    Banana Jam
    
15.8    Ready-To-Serve (Rts) Beverage
    
15.9    Banana Beer and Wine
    
15.10    Banana Vinegar
    
15.11    Banana Catsup
    
15.12    Banana Inflorescence Relish
    
15.13    Candied Banana
    
15.14    Other Banana Based Products

Climate change exposes onion production to irregular rainfall, heat, drought, flooding and increasing pest and disease pressure. These stresses can reduce yield, damage bulb quality, increase storage losses and threaten smallholder livelihoods. This chapter uses research literature and case studies to examine resilience at farm, community and supply-system levels. It emphasizes location-specific varieties, crop rotation, micro-irrigation, efficient input use, digital forecasting, protected production, improved storage and reliable cold chains. Farmer organizations, extension services, subsidies and supportive institutions are also important. Sustainable onion farming requires agronomic, technological, socioeconomic and policy measures to function together, enabling growers to adapt to climatic uncertainty while conserving resources and maintaining profitability.

Drying is the oldest known method of preserving food. Drying or dehydration is removal of majority of water contained in fruit or vegetable. Although preservation is the primary reason for dehydration, it also lowers cost of packaging, storing and transportation by reducing both weight and volume of final product. In addition, dried foods add variety to our diets. In the process of drying, sufficient moisture is removed to protect product  from  spoilage. Processing should be done in such a way that food value, natural flavour and characteristic cooking quality of fresh material are retained after drying.

Abstract

Fertilizer inputs are increasing the cost of production in inputintensive crops, so nutrient efficientcultivar is need oftoday. More demands for food by increasing world populations further enhance the importance of nutrient efficient crop cultivars that are higher producers. Breedingtechniques havebeenimplemented significantlyto breed highnutrientefficient crop cultivars to achieve the targets. However, molecular mechanism of nutrient metabolism has been understood to some extent in many crops through quantitative genetic approaches. This minireview outlines an update on recent progress on the genetic approaches of QTL/candidate genes controlling nutrient metabolism pathways in the crop plants.

Introduction Papaya fruit is listed under the family Caricaceae. This family has total four genera all over the world. There are about four species found in India under the Carica L. genus. Carica papaya L. is one of the species among them and it is most widely cultivated and very well-known species in India (Kumar and Devi, 2017). It has a thin, little shiny, and green-colored peel which turns into orange colored after ripening. The size of the fruit varies from 5.5 to 5.9 cm in terms of diameter. Papaya has several industrial applications in food processing, pharmaceutical as well as cosmetic industries. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2013), India, Indonesia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, and Mexico are the countries that produce the largest number of papayas in the world, India being the largest producer (4457.1 tonnes) followed by Brazil (1859.3 tonnes) in the year 2011.

Abstract

Issues regarding intellectual property rights and their protection are heralded nowadays in the scientific arena both in developed and developing countries. IPR is being given greater attention and importance due to the projected idea that it is a dependable means through which greater skills and knowledge can be utilised to serve as a reliable resource for the upliftment of the economy as well as knowledge dissemination. In context of microorganisms, India does not allow patenting of microbes whichalready exists in nature assuch but genetically modified version of the same microorganism with enhanced and improved efficacy can be patented. The deposition of microorganisms in a culture collection recognized as an international depository authority (IDA) is necessary if intellectual property rights regarding these microbes are to be claimed. An action plan for developing countries towards creating IDAs and preserving the natural gene pool has been evolved. It is likely that IDAs will transform into ‘biological resource centres’ and further into‘global common genetic resources’, with an internationally agreed legal basis for benefit sharing. This chapter is an effort to highlight the genesis of patenting and legalities of patenting microorganism in India.

Much of the post-harvest losses of fruits and vegetables in developing countries is due to the lack of proper storage facilities. While refrigerated cool stores are the best method of preserving fruits and vegetables they are expensive to buy and run. Consequently, in developing countries there is an interest in simple low-cost alternatives, many of which depend on evaporative cooling which is simple and does not require any external power supply. India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world after Brazil and China respectively. Storage of fresh horticultural produce after harvest is one of the most pressing problems of a tropical country like India. India’s total fruits and vegetables production is lost during harvest, storage, grading, transport, packaging and distribution in a year which reduces the growers share. Due to their highly perishable nature, about 20-40% of total fruit and vegetable production go waste during various steps of the post-harvest chain, smooth transport and insufficient cool storage space/ facility at farmer’s level and high cost of refrigerated storage so further enhances loss of fruits and vegetables. Temperature and humidity play major role in storage of fruits and vegetables Temperature can be controlled by using energy consuming methods such as air-cooling, hydro-cooling, vacuum-cooling, chilling, ice cooling, freezing, etc.

Introduction

The term probiotic is derived from Greek and means ‘for life’ as opposed to antibiotics which means ‘against life’. The history of probiotics began with the consumption of fermented foods which was first observed in ancient Greeks and Romans [1]. The term, probiotic, as is used today was first used by Parker in 1974. Parker defined ‘probiotic’ as substances and organisms which contribute to intestinal microbial balance. In 1989, the term was modified further by Fuller. Thus, probiotic is a live microbial supplement which affects the host’s health positively by improving its intestinal microbial balance. This definition was broadened to include mono or mixed culture of live microorganisms which benefits animals or man by improving the properties of the indigenous microflora [2]. Some authors have interpreted probiotics as microbial cell preparations or components of microbial cells that have a beneficial effect on the health and well-being of the host.

Introduction
 
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the functional foods because they can provide physiological benefits additional to nutritional and energetic, as for instance, antihypertensive, antioxidant or anti-inflammatory [1]. A functional food can be defined as a food that produces a beneficial effect in one or more physiological functions, increases the welfare and/or decreases the risk of suffering a particular disease. Furthermore, new types of products, derived from food, called nutraceuticals have recently been developed. These products, usually employed as food supplements, are marketed as tablets and pills, and can provide important health benefits.

6.1 Strength of India
    ·    In India, pomegranate is cultivated over 1.31 lakh ha with a production of 13.46 lakh tonnes and a productivity of 10.27 t/ha. 
    ·    India is the largest producer of pomegranates in the world.
    ·    Pomegranate is currently ranked 10th in terms of fruit consumed annually in the world. India is the only country in the world where pomegranate is available throughout the year i.e. From January to December. It is cultivated in 3 seasons (Ambia bahar, Mrig bahar and hasth bahar) in Deccan plateau of India. 
    ·    India is endowed with wide agro climatic conditions that offer immense scope for cultivation of various kinds of fruit crops. This provides an excellent platform for the country to emerge as a leading producer of fruit crop. 

Introduction Consumer demands for convenience and mildly processed meals with long shelf lives have led to unique and current developments in food packaging solutions (Dobrucka and Cierpiszewski, 2014). Additionally, the development of unique and creative packaging solutions that do not compromise food safety or quality is being fueled by the current retail trend and changing lifestyles (Dainelli et al., 2008). The widespread use of packaged meals has raised consumer demand for prepared foods like microwaveable dinners, and the growing popularity of smaller food packages all help to fuel the food industry's explosive growth in creative packaging (Restuccia et al., 2010). The rise in food-borne microbial outbreaks, which calls for the usage of packaging that possesses antimicrobial qualities while retaining food quality, is another major driver of new food packaging (Appendini and Hotchtkiss, 2002). The initial advancements in packaging were electrically powered packing equipment, flexible packaging, metallic cans, aseptic packaging, aluminium foils, and flexographic printing. A considerable movement away from metal, paperboard, and glass packaging in favour of plastic and flexible packaging was also brought about by the discovery of various materials such as polyester, polypropylene, and ethylene vinyl alcohol polymers.

3.1. General Introduction

Value addition refers to the conversion of a raw commodity or commodities into a processed product through the use of raw materials, labour, time and technology, all mixed in a way that ensures increased economic return. Even if the amount of processing in a product is much less, for example, any canned fruit can be considered as a processed product. Value added processing of horticultural food crops, mainly involves actions which changes fresh fruits and vegetables to create a greater value-added product for human consumption, which mostly includes canned products, juices, soups, sauces and dehydrated fruits and vegetables (Sharan, 2018). It results in diversification of agricultural activities, improves value addition opportunities and creates surplus for export of processed agro products. Processing often goes with perishable products like meat, milk, poultry, fruits and vegetables, often termed as High Value Products (HVPs), are in greater demand of processing (Sanal & Krishna, 2017). The demands for processed products are particularly strong in developing countries like China and India; mainly due to increasing industrialization and rapid urbanization, followed by elevated income levels, greater diversity in diets, and affinity towards premium-branded products (Sharan, 2018).

Introduction

For human beings, the three most important necessities for their survival are food, clothing and shelter. among all of these food is the top most priority. Food safety and Standards defines food into 8 categories (Nutraceutical, Heath Supplements/Dietary Supplements, Food for special medical Purpose, food for Special Dietary Use, Novel Food, and Functional food) in regulation, 2016. A growing trend of health products, concept of food as medicine, associated public interest and consumers demand leads to a progressive research interest in functional foods and nutraceuticals development. Abnormal lifestyle, food habits (consumption of junk food) and low physical activity creates an exponential growth in a number of chronic diseases; obesity, cardio-vascular syndromes, osteoporosis, arthritis and cancer (Das et al., 2012) among the developing and developed countries. While nutraceuticals and functional foods are becoming an alternative affordable system to reduce the risk of disease through prevention in spite of high tech therapies and costly medicines.

The current survey showed that worldwide revenue of functional foods is projected to increase from about 300 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 to over 440 billion dollars in 2022. Also according to the International Food Information Council (IFIC), health benefits achieved from functional food components may provide benefits far beyond than basic nutrition. Products like dietary supplements containing vitamins, functional foods such as sports drinks or products fortified with probiotic play a major role in the market rise (www.statista.com).Indian and Chinese traditional foods, recipes, spices and diversified ingredient market is well known around the world from centuries. Hence, a double-digit growth rate is also experienced in Asian nutraceutical and functional food market. Another reason for the growing trend in consuming functional foods is education and proper health awareness. Furthermore, people are more concern about the optimization of health-promoting capabilities in their diet using dietary supplement and fortified foods. While, food product based industries are marketing health supplements using scientific facts and the relationship between diet and health. Government, non-government organizations (NGOs) and web-based online information also play a key role in promoting and trending food based health products.