My name is Zhongli Pan. I'm a research engineer. ARS provided me a great opportunity to work with other researchers, scientists and engineers, visiting professors, post docs and also I work with scientists from other countries including China, Brazil, Mexico and some other countries. The US food and agricultural industries have great need for new technology to process fruit and vegetables. This research is important because now we are facing the challenges of a global market. Because we develop new technology we can produce better products and also we can reduce the cost and improve efficiency we can increase the value and we can make American products more competitive in the global market. My research focuses on new infrared heating technology. Strawberries are one of the commodities we have been working on we can use the process for drying, blanching, disinfestation and also we can use we use it for pasteurization. When we use the infrared technology to dry strawberries we can increase the drying rate and use less energy. At the same time, we can produce better strawberries. They are healthier and also we can make them with a lower cost. Typically, the drying is done by using hot air or freeze drying. But they are slow and use a lot of energy. When we use the new technology to reduce the drying time, we can produce a more nutritious product. We also use it for other applications, too like blanching. When we use it for blanching. This is a dry blanching we don't need water or steam. So, it is more environmentally friendly. Also, sometimes for certain products we need a blanching followed by a drying. When we use dry blanching we can combine the drying and blanching steps into one process. This is a much simpler process. And we also work with industries trying to commercialize the products and the process. We also use the infrared technology for rice drying. It only takes about a minute to remove the same amount of moisture in what commercially would be using 20 minutes and the same time we can kill the insects to achieve disinfestation. It is a better technology than the chemical method, such as fumigation method, and it is environmentally friendly. Besides strawberries we are also studied other commodities including blueberries, baby carrots and many others. And they all worked well. Another project we have been working on is using infrared for pasteurization. We found we can use the infrared for the pasteurization of tree nuts including almonds. Right now the is a great need for alternative technology to kill microorganisms such as salmonella. What we found, we can use infrared to achieve the pasteurization requirements while still maintaining the quality of the raw almonds. Another project we have been working on is using rice bran to produce a particle board. Sometimes it is also called a composite. Because rice bran is a byproduct from rice processing it has a very low value. By using chemical and a thermal processing method we developed we can bring out the adhesive properties of rice bran and use a rice straw to make particle board. The product is more environmentally friendly. Because we use a biobased adhesive and also we increase the value of the byproduct from agricultural processing industry. Another produce we have been working on is ultrasound treatment to increase the water absorption rate of brown rice. What is called a quick cooking method brown rice by altering the cooking characteristics we can reduce the cooking time. Brown rice is more nutritious than white rice making it the healthier choice. Another application of the ultrasound treatment is for extracting antioxidants from fruits and vegetables. When we use ultrasonic treatment we can increase the extraction efficiencies which means we can reduce the extraction costs. And also we can produce a high value product. I feel greatly honored to receive this award. More importantly I feel this is a result of a collaborative and team effort. I want to thank all the ARS scientists and the other people who have directly and indirectly contributed to the research.