High quality products can be produced only from high quality raw materials. Thus, food industries invest in raw materials (substances and products) to produce their finished food products working with raw food producers from around the world. Actually, there's need of close cooperation between agriculture and processing plants. Indeed, the farmers make agreements with the food industry on the quantity and quality of raw materials produced and after the evaluation of their products they are paid according to their quality.
The raw materials are divided to two categories based to their origin: animal origin and plant origin:
- Meat, Seafood, and Poultry (animal origin)
- Grains, Seeds, and Nuts (plant origin)
- Fruits and vegetables (plant origin)
- Dairy products (animal origin)
- Eggs (animal origin)
- Honey (animal origin)
Talking about quality we mean the combination of their physical and chemical properties that serve the needs, and determine its degree of acceptance by the food processor or/and the consumer.
As physical properties are meant: the obvious (organoleptic) characteristics, such as : shape, appearance, taste, smell, flavour, texture, color, defects, aroma, size, density, freshness, etc.
Chemical properties of food are those properties that cannot be measured without altering the chemical composition of the food material, such as: moisture content and water activity, fat content, pH, acidity, viscosity, nutritive value, enzyme concentration,etc.
Exogenous factors that affect quality of raw materials are:
- preharvest factors (soil conditions, climate and agricultural practices, use of pesticide residues, etc.)
- harvesting (timing, and methods)
- postharvest conditions during transportation,storage, and handling (temperature, humidity, environmental conditions,
time of the transfer in form of durtion, etc) - preparatory operations.
Please make a research on the above properties and present your findings making use of the following Google presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IS1jeLmyMjjDToq-u1DXn-eeDqZCglXc/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116721909887034146565&rtpof=true&sd=true