Recent Development in Plum Harvesting and Handling

Plums are a widely consumed fruit species belonging to the family Rosaceae with two main species, Prunus domestica and Prunus salicina, that can be consumed fresh or dried. Plums exhibit several types of nutritional fluctuations depending on the adopted harvesting and handling methods. The handling of plums after harvesting is a very sensitive and important practice because the quality of the end product should be maintained during handling to obtain an important slot in the ever-changing and competitive fruit market. The most familiar and effective conventional method of harvesting plums is picking the fruits by hand, but the recent advancement of modern robotic or automatic harvesting methods raised the bar for a better and larger collection of plum fruit. However, their efficiency is still a matter of debate since mechanically harvested fruits are often more damaged, resulting in 74% perfectly harvested fruit, whereas the number is as high as 95% for conventional handpicking methods. Some of the most extensively used modern handling methods include pre-cooling, heat treatment, cold storage, controlled atmosphere storage and edible coatings. This chapter focuses on the recent advances in plum harvesting and handling techniques without compromising the nutritional quality of the plum fruit.