Technical Abstract: Infrared (IR) heating could be an alternative technology for thermal and dehydration processing of food and agricultural products with many advantages, including high process and energy efficiencies, high product quality, improved food safety and reduced environmental pollution. This paper reviews the latest research results and potential applications of infrared technology for drying, blanching, disinfestation, and disinfection of fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts. IR heating has demonstrated significant reduction of processing time in various applications including drying of rice and onions, simultaneous blanching and dehydration of apples, and sequential infrared and freeze-drying of strawberries. The processed products using IR heating showed better or comparable quality as the conventionally-processed products. Moreover, disinfestation of both freshly harvested and storage paddy rice using catalytic IR (CIR) showed that the IR heating was effective enough to kill lesser grain borers (Rhizopertha dominica) and angoumois grain moths (Sitotroga cerealella) while retaining rice quality. CIR heating also achieved five log reductions of Salmonella enteriditis on raw almond kernels without compromising product quality.