Dr. GD Shirke and MS Pinjarkar

Tree spices in addition to adding taste, flavour, scent, and colour, also serve as preservatives by preventing food and beverage goods from getting deteriorated. Their is a vast source of aromatic compounds and essential oils, which are in high demand in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries in both domestic and international trade. They are recognised as one of the most functionally significant food ingredients since, they also have nutritional, antibacterial, antioxidant, and medicinal qualities. Therefore, efforts are focused on upgrading the area, raising productivity, and enhancing tree spice quality. However, in the current environment, we face major obstacles not only in maintaining the output of tree spices but also in minimising their losses. Here, post-harvest management of tree spices seems to be more important. The majority of freshly picked spices contains high moisture content, they are highly perishable, and are microbially contaminated. When it comes to reducing post-harvest losses, actions like picking produce at the right time, moving it safely to processing facilities, cleaning, blanching and treating it with the proper chemicals, dehydrating it, packaging it for storage or processing it into value-added products, etc., are all very important practices.

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