postharvest

The humble lettuce… a garnish to your burger, the crunch in your sandwich, the star of your salad… Believe it or not, the lettuce industry rakes in over $2 billion in revenue in California, which grows over 2/3 of the lettuce consumed in the whole of the US, placing it as the 6th most valuable food commodity1. And this is before the consideration of value-added products, such as pre-prepared salads and baby leaf salad mixes.

The UC Davis post-harvest centre was founded over 40 years ago by Adel Kader. The aim of this centre is to coordinate and gather knowledge to reduce postharvest losses and improve the product quality. From there till now, the postharvest centre remains as one of the top sources of postharvest knowledge offering three courses: Fruit ripening, Postharvest short-course and the Fresh cut workshop.