This manual, presents material from a wide variety of disciplines associated with the prevention of food losses and development of marketing operations, particularly those in fruit, vegetables and roots and tubers. It is directed to field staff, project supervisors, teachers at agricultural schools and at training institutions, and extension personnel connected with the handling and marketing of those commodities. This manual should serve as a reference work on the prevention of postharvest food losses. For specific training purposes, the manual takes up a number of crops and techniques from which the trainer can select according to local conditions. Trainers are encouraged to supplement the material by practical work and by detailed worksheets or handouts covering special topics of local interest.

The fruit and vegetable production sector of Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern Europe is facing a new situation where, on the one hand, supermarket chains account for an increasing percentage of the domestic food retail market and, on the other hand, producers must compete in an increasingly demanding global market for non traditional and off-season fruits and vegetables. Small farmers are increasingly being marginalized and will be facing unequal market conditions unless they are able to change their practices to meet the needs of a modern food marketing system. Regardless of the production system, the technological challenge is to increase returns through the rational use of available resources, reducing production costs and post-harvest losses, enhancing competitiveness and adding value to the final product.

Contains information on the following crops: tubers, ornamentals, herbs, spices, vegetables, fruits, energy plants, root crops, flowers, trees, plantation crops, and agroforestry crops.

“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?