Location: Food Science and Market Quality and Handling Research Unit
Project Number: 6070-41000-010-004-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Feb 1, 2022
End Date: Dec 31, 2023
Objective:
The phenomenal growth of the pickling industry in the USA and abroad merits documenting the technologies and practices that have led to such success as well as the novel technologies that will ensure continued developments to expand production of safe and consumer preferred pickles and related products. To this end, it is necessary to capture existing knowledge within the pickling industry to enable the specialization of the workforce, assure the manufacture of high quality and safe finished products, and facilitate the transfer of emerging science-based knowledge and technologies to the private sector. The documentation of the currently available experience among processors represents a critical advancement in achieving such goal. Hence, we aim to develop documentaries to capture the wealth of knowledge existing within the experienced workforce and science-based facts to augment understanding of the current alignment of the ARS research efforts with industry needs, enhance processors and manufacturers understanding of traditional and new practices and advocate for science-based and safe pickle production.
Approach:
The Food Science and Market Quality and Handling Research Unit proposes to collaborate with experienced processors to design an informational and scholastic webinars and workshops series at the intersection of fundamental and applied science that is meaningful to industry partners and the pickling blockchain. We will use our combined experience of more than 100 years in research and global industrial processing of pickled vegetables to generate a series of voice-enabled webinars that will be made available via our Unit website. These webinars, developed via our public-private partnership, will address relevant topics such as ingredients, processing interventions, measurements, quality parameters, safety parameters, post-harvest interventions, effluent treatments and technological advances. The need to develop in-person workshops to facilitate experiential learning relevant to pickling will be assessed appropriately with feedback from our stakeholders.
