Postharvest & Cold Chain

Cold chain technologies determine food quality, safety and waste with IoT and AI transforming the field. The session covers IoT-enabled cold-chain monitoring with continuous temperature and humidity tracking, modified-atmosphere packaging extending shelf life, edible coatings (Apeel, Hazel) reducing loss, ripening sensors enabling smart logistics, food-loss reduction strategies in developing markets, and last-mile delivery cold chain. Discussion addresses pharma-grade cold chain principles applied to food, smart packaging and time-temperature integrators, blockchain-enabled cold-chain traceability, the role of cold-chain in vaccine logistics learnings applied to food, and the climate-resilience considerations as energy costs and temperatures rise.