MANGOEXPORT - improving mango quality in export supply chains

Abstract

Brazil is the world's eighth largest mango producer. In 2009, Brazilian mango production was of 1.197.694 tones. Mango ranks in third place among Brazilian fruit exports and in 2010 mango exports reached 124.694 metric tons, a 13% increase in relation to the previous year. The income to the country was of US$ 119.929.762, in 2010. Although important to the country, mango exports represent just 10.4% of Brazilian mango production. Based on the cultivation of American varieties, such as 'Tommy Atkins', 'Haden', 'Kent', 'Keitt' and 'Palmer', the later has increased in importance due to its quality characteristics and consumer preference, especially to European countries, and Portugal is commercially important. Portugal is the European country with the highest per capita consumption of mango and Brazil is the leading source of mango to the Portuguese market. Therefore, Portugal and can serve as test country to improve the supply chain of Brazilian mangos for export markets. Modern competitive supply chains, however, are highly knowledge-intensive and significant gaps exist in fundamental, applied, and industrial knowledge regarding mango postharvest behaviour. Despite the excellent natural conditions for production, Brazilian mangoes have quality problems in export markets. In Portugal, the retailers complain about poor quality and lack uniformity in the fruit quality. Poor mango quality in destination markets is often due to the poor flavour of fruit harvested immature, chilling injury, and decay or peel blemishes caused by anthracnose. Based on the findings obtained with the FAPESP research project (proc. 2005/56160-0) the main objective of this project is to improve ´Palmer' mango quality in export supply chains to Europe (Portugal), and the specific objectives are: i. establish the best maturity stage for sea freight mangoes under low temperature and controlled atmosphere (CA), determined using non destructive techniques (near infrared spectrometer); ii.modelling respiration based on physiological aspects, on the kinetics of respiration as a function of O2 concentration; iii. compare whether the proposed approach with be different from traditional mango processing in real condition sea freight container shipment to Europe (Portugal). (AU)