A new method to describe the cooling process of packaged horticulture produce.

Horticultural products are commonly cooled after packing in a process referred to as forced draft cooling. Effectiveness of cooling processes and hence comparisons between techniques are usually conducted with the comparison of half cooling (HCT) and seven eighths cooling times (SECT). This paper presents a new method to quantitatively describe the cooling process. The cooling profile was divided into three phases, being the initial (Y > 0.75), transitional (0.75 > Y > 0.5) and final phase (0.5 > Y > 0.125). The method was applied to two data sets obtained from the forced-air cooling of palletised kiwifruit subjected to different volumetric flow rates. Irrespective of airflow rate or box orientation on the pallet, during the initial phase the top fruit layers cooled fastest, while middle fruit layers were always the slowest and bottom layers intermediate. During the final phase, the cooling rates of all the layers within the box become similar. This suggested new method is able to provide more detail description of the cooling process of bulk packed product.