PROCESS

NOTES

Harvest

Mature vegetable, harvested carefully. Except for hard vegetables (e.g. root crops) they should not be piled into vehicles. Use containers (Fig.1) with loaded weight of 10 kg approx. Smaller and they will be thrown, larger and they will be dragged or dropped - both causing damage to food and container.

Sort/grade

Sort by size, colour, shape, maturity, skin defects (Table 2).

Clean

Wash in clean water. Use filters or chlorinate if necessary (one teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water) (Fig. 2).

Peel/trim

By hand or by small scale equipment (Fig. 3) to remove skins, outside leaves etc. Use stainless steel knives and easily cleaned plastic or wooden cutting surfaces.

Slice

Manually or using small cutters.