India is the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world scenario, but the availability of fruits and vegetables per capita is significantly low because of Post-Harvest loses which account for about 25% to 30% of production. Smallholder farmers face an unsustainably high percentage of losses each and every year. Therefore, there is a need of developing affordable, portable appropriate storage chamber for vegetable/fruit growers. Due to uncertain biological nature of the stored product, a good understanding of the dynamics of the stored product will have a large impact on the design of an efficient control system/chamber to achieve the desired results. Conventional control concepts are often unsuitable in food product cycles, due to natural life cycle of the product after harvesting. Developing a portable storage chambers using the principles of hydration/evaporative cooling for the creation of microclimate zones, helps in increasing the shelf life of the product.
The electrostatic force field application to agriculture, food safety, packing, and industrial applications is one of the most promising methods to apply the protective liquid based sprays onto the biological surfaces, edible coatings to minimally processed fruits and food products, thin film deposition etc. It has revolutionized the industrial spraying techniques by making advances and developments via off-target control to increase the deposition efficiency, uniformity of deposition and coverage. Furthermore, electrostatic technology for coating of antioxidant and edible films for food preservation has gained lot of attention owing to its importance in enhancing the shelf life of food without losing its nutritional and sensory properties. Although few research initiatives have been taken over the past years, the work remains largely in the nascent stage as far as field-scale technology development is concerned. The proposed objectives aim to develop a much advanced and high end commercial instrument/process for edible coatings to perishable food products and fruits to enhance the shelf-life and to provide the nutritional value. Prior art does not mention any device having such efficient and uniform coating machine which produce uniform droplets.
