Post-Harvest
Post-harvest handling & storage
What happens after harvest determines how much of a crop reaches the market in good condition. This section covers the drying, cooling, storage, handling, and processing operations that preserve quality and reduce post-harvest losses.
Why post-harvest management matters
A substantial share of what farms produce is lost or degraded between harvest and consumption. Post-harvest losses arise from mechanical damage, moisture, heat, pests, moulds, and poor handling — and they waste all the water, nutrients, and labour already invested in the crop. Sound post-harvest practice protects both quality and value.
The main operations
- Handling & conditioning — harvesting at the right maturity, careful handling to limit bruising, plus cleaning, sorting, grading, and curing.
- Drying — reducing grain and seed moisture to a safe level for storage.
- Cooling & cold storage — removing field heat and holding perishables near their optimum temperature and humidity.
- Storage — protecting produce from moisture, pests, and moulds, including hermetic and controlled-atmosphere methods.
- Processing & quality — value-adding steps and the quality and food-safety checks that govern them.
Optimum conditions vary by commodity; see individual crop entries and the machinery used in these operations for context. AgricultureID does not publish universal storage settings — they depend on the commodity, cultivar, and local conditions.
Post-harvest topics A–Z
In-depth entries for each post-harvest operation and concept — how it works, why it matters for quality and loss reduction, and how it is managed.
59 entries
- Post-harvest operation
Aerated Storage
Aeration moves ambient air through stored grain at low airflow to bring the bulk to a cool, even temperature. It drives a cooling front through the mass — it conditions grain, but it does not dry it.
- Post-harvest operation
Ambient Warehouse Storage
Ambient warehouse storage holds dried, shelf-stable commodities in an unrefrigerated building. Stability comes from the commodity being dry, not from the store, whose job is exclusion of damp, pests, and taint.
- Post-harvest operation
Bag Stack Storage
Bag stack storage holds grain in woven sacks stacked on pallets in a warehouse. Dominant at smallholder and tropical scale, it preserves nothing on its own: the sack is a handling unit, not a barrier to moisture or pests.
- Post-harvest operation
Batch Drying
Batch drying loads a fixed quantity of grain into a dryer, dries it, unloads it, and repeats. It is the simplest heated-air arrangement, keeps lots separate and traceable, and trades throughput for flexibility and low capital cost.
- Post-harvest operation
Bulk Bag (FIBC)
A bulk bag holds a load that no person can lift, in a fabric container that folds flat when empty. It sits between the sack and the silo, and unlike either of them it is always suspended over the ground on lifting equipment.
- Post-harvest operation
Bulk Bin Produce Storage
Bulk bin storage holds apples, potatoes, and roots in stacked pallet boxes that carry the stack load and define the air path, so produce is cooled and traced bin by bin rather than as one mass.
- Post-harvest operation
Chilled Grain Storage
Chilled grain storage uses a refrigeration unit to feed conditioned air into a store’s aeration system, cooling a bulk where ambient air never can. It controls insects without chemicals — but it is not drying.
- Post-harvest operation
Clamp Storage
Clamp storage holds roots in an earth- and straw-covered field ridge, insulated against frost while the ground keeps it cool. It needs no building or power, but cannot be inspected once closed.
- Post-harvest operation
Cold Chain
The cold chain is an unbroken sequence of temperature-controlled steps — from precooling through cold storage and refrigerated transport to retail — that keeps perishable produce cold from harvest to consumer to preserve quality and safety.
- Post-harvest operation
Cold Storage
Cold storage holds perishable produce at low temperature and controlled humidity to slow respiration, ripening, water loss, and decay, extending shelf life and preserving quality between harvest and market.
- Post-harvest operation
Commercial Grain Silo
A commercial grain silo is elevator- or terminal-scale storage in concrete or steel cells, where grain from many suppliers is graded on intake, segregated by class and condition, aerated, and blended out to specification.
- Post-harvest operation
Continuous-Flow Drying
Continuous-flow drying moves grain steadily through a dryer while heated air passes across or through it, so wet grain enters and dry grain leaves without stopping. It buys throughput at harvest, and pays for it in control complexity and loss of lot identity.
- Post-harvest operation
Controlled Atmosphere Storage
Controlled atmosphere (CA) storage holds fruit and some vegetables in a gas-tight room where oxygen is lowered and carbon dioxide raised, in addition to refrigeration, to slow respiration and ripening and greatly extend storage life.
- Post-harvest operation
Curing (Roots, Tubers & Bulbs)
Curing is a short conditioning period, at warm temperature and usually high humidity, that heals harvest wounds and sets the skin of roots, tubers, and bulbs so they resist water loss and decay in storage.
- Post-harvest operation
Degreening (Citrus)
Degreening holds mature citrus in ethylene to break down the chlorophyll in the rind, letting the orange or yellow underneath show. It is not ripening: citrus is non-climacteric, and nothing inside the fruit improves. It changes the peel, and only the peel.
- Post-harvest operation
Dehulling and Hull Removal
Dehulling removes the hull, husk, shell, or seed coat that encloses an edible kernel. It is distinct from threshing, which frees the seed from the plant: dehulling attacks the seed's own protective layer, and every gain in recovery is paid for in breakage.
- Post-harvest operation
Destoning
Destoning removes stones, soil clods, glass, and metal from grain, pulses, and roots. It is a specific case of grain cleaning that exists because these contaminants are the same size as the crop, so screens cannot catch them and density must be used instead.
- Post-harvest operation
Ethylene Management
Ethylene management controls the ripening plant hormone ethylene in stores and transport — separating producers from sensitive crops, ventilating or scrubbing it away, and sometimes blocking its action — to slow ripening and reduce quality loss.
- Post-harvest operation
Farm Grain Bin
A farm grain bin is an on-farm cylindrical steel bin that holds dried grain on an aerated floor, using fans to bring the bulk to a low, even temperature so it can be held safely from harvest until sale or use.
- Post-harvest operation
Fibreboard Carton
The corrugated fibreboard carton is the default package of the fresh produce trade. It carries the load through its vertical walls, is printable and recyclable, and loses much of its strength when it gets wet or stands in humid cold storage.
- Post-harvest operation
Field Heat and the First Mile
Field heat is the heat a crop carries out of the field plus the heat it goes on generating by respiring. This entry covers the first mile — the interval between cutting and the first engineered cooling step — where that heat accumulates and where most cold chains are lost before they start.
- Post-harvest operation
Flat Storage Warehouse
A flat storage warehouse holds grain piled in bulk on a building floor rather than in a tall cell, aerated through floor ducts — cheap to build and easy to cool, but harder to aerate evenly and to segregate.
- Post-harvest operation
Fruit Ripening
Fruit ripening is the set of changes that make fruit palatable — softening, sweetening, colour and aroma development. Understanding climacteric versus non-climacteric fruit underpins harvest timing, storage, and controlled ripening rooms.
- Post-harvest operation
Grain Cleaning
Grain cleaning removes chaff, dust, straw, weed seeds, broken grain, and other foreign matter from harvested grain, improving storage stability, quality, market grade, and the performance of drying and milling.
- Post-harvest operation
Grain Drying
Grain drying reduces the moisture content of harvested grain and seed to a level that is safe for storage, slowing mould growth, insect activity, and respiration so the crop can be held without spoilage or loss of quality.
- Post-harvest operation
Grain Storage
Grain storage is the practice of holding dried grain safely over weeks to years by controlling moisture, temperature, insects, and moulds, so the crop retains its quality and value until it is sold, processed, or consumed.
- Post-harvest operation
Harvest Maturity Assessment
Harvest maturity assessment is the judgement of whether a crop is ready to pick. It is the one post-harvest decision taken before harvest, and it sets a ceiling on the quality that every later operation can only preserve or lose.
- Post-harvest operation
Hermetic Storage
Hermetic storage holds dry grain and seed in airtight containers so that respiration by the grain, insects, and moulds lowers oxygen and raises carbon dioxide, suppressing storage pests without chemicals.
- Post-harvest operation
Jute Sack
The jute sack is a woven bag of natural bast fibre. It breathes, it grips in a stack, and it rots away when discarded. It also weakens when damp, sheds fibre, harbours insects in its weave, and can taint the crop with the oil used to spin it.
- Post-harvest operation
Liners and Wraps
A liner is the layer inside the package: film, paper, or pad that manages moisture and contact while the container carries the load. Put a film around respiring produce and you have modified its atmosphere — whether or not you meant to.
- Post-harvest operation
Mesh Bag
A mesh bag is an open net that contains produce while barely enclosing it. That is the point: for cured bulbs and roots that must keep breathing and stay dry, maximum airflow matters more than protection, and the shopper can see what they are buying.
- Post-harvest operation
Modified Atmosphere Packaging
Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) seals fresh or fresh-cut produce in a package whose internal atmosphere becomes low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide, slowing respiration and decay to extend shelf life.
- Post-harvest operation
Modified Atmosphere Storage
Modified atmosphere storage lets a commodity’s own respiration establish a low-oxygen atmosphere inside a barrier. Unlike controlled atmosphere, nothing measures or regulates the gases — the atmosphere is allowed, not set.
- Post-harvest operation
Moisture Content and Equilibrium
Grain moisture content and its equilibrium with surrounding air govern how safely grain can be stored. Understanding wet versus dry basis, equilibrium moisture content, and water activity underpins drying, storage, and loss prevention.
- Post-harvest operation
Natural-Air and Low-Temperature Drying
Natural-air drying blows unheated or slightly warmed air through grain resting in a bin or floor store. It is gentle and cheap to run, but the air does the work at its own pace, and the race is between the drying front and the grain waiting above it.
- Post-harvest operation
Onion and Garlic Curing
Onion and garlic curing dries the necks and outer scales of harvested bulbs so they seal against moisture loss and decay, producing bulbs with tight, dry skins that store far longer than uncured ones.
- Post-harvest operation
Onion Store
An onion store holds cured bulbs in a ventilated bulk, driving dry air through the mass to keep necks and skins dry and bulbs dormant. Unlike root storage, its governing rule is to keep the crop dry.
- Post-harvest operation
Packing and Packaging
Packing and packaging protect harvested produce and grain during handling, storage, and transport — containing and stacking the product, cushioning it against damage, and helping maintain the conditions that preserve quality.
- Post-harvest operation
Palletisation
Palletisation turns many packages into one unit load that a machine can move. It is the layer of packaging most likely to be treated as a formality, and the one that most reliably decides whether the packages beneath it survive and whether cooling air reaches the middle.
- Post-harvest operation
Post-Harvest Food Loss
Post-harvest food loss is the food that is grown and harvested but lost before it reaches consumers, through spillage, spoilage, pests, and quality decline. Reducing it improves food security and the returns from resources already spent.
- Post-harvest operation
Potato Storage
Potato storage holds harvested tubers in good condition for months by curing them first, then managing temperature and humidity to control sprouting, water loss, decay, and sugar changes according to the intended use.
- Post-harvest operation
Precooling
Precooling is the rapid removal of field heat from freshly harvested produce, soon after picking, to slow respiration, ripening, water loss, and decay before the produce enters cold storage or transport.
- Post-harvest operation
Punnet and Clamshell
The punnet is a small rigid pack that carries a retail quantity of soft fruit and takes the load off the fruit itself. It works — soft fruit is only sold at distance because of it — and it is the packaging most exposed to the charge of using material to sell air.
- Post-harvest operation
Refrigerated Container
A refrigerated container is an insulated shipping box with an integral cooling unit that delivers air through a T-bar floor and up through the stow. It holds precooled produce at temperature — it cannot cool a warm load.
- Post-harvest operation
Refrigerated Warehouse
A refrigerated warehouse is a multi-chamber distribution cold store holding different commodities at their own temperatures. Its hardest problem is not making cold but keeping it in a building whose doors never stop opening.
- Post-harvest operation
Returnable Plastic Crate
The returnable plastic crate is rigid, ventilated, washable, and used many times. Its advantages are real, and they are all conditional on two things a crate cannot supply for itself: it must actually come back, and it must actually be cleaned.
- Post-harvest operation
Root Cellar
A root cellar is a passive underground or earth-banked store that borrows the soil’s stable temperature and humidity to hold roots, tubers, and hardy vegetables through winter without machinery.
- Post-harvest operation
Shade Drying
Shade drying removes moisture out of direct sunlight, using air movement rather than solar heating. It is chosen for spices, herbs, and other high-value aromatics whose colour and volatile compounds are damaged by the very sunlight that would dry them fastest.
- Post-harvest operation
Silo Bag
A silo bag stores grain in a sealed polythene tube laid in the field, where respiration depletes the oxygen and suppresses insects. It applies the hermetic principle at harvest scale, with no building or power.
- Post-harvest operation
Sorting and Grading
Sorting and grading separate produce and grain by quality attributes such as size, colour, shape, and defects into consistent grades, removing unsound units and matching each lot to its market, price, and end use.
- Post-harvest operation
Storage Moulds and Mycotoxins
Storage moulds such as Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Fusarium spoil grain and can produce mycotoxins — including aflatoxins and deoxynivalenol — that pose food and feed safety risks. Keeping grain dry and cool is the primary prevention.
- Post-harvest operation
Stored-Grain Insects
Stored-grain insects — weevils, borers, beetles, and moths — feed on and contaminate stored grain and pulses, causing weight loss, quality loss, and heating. Integrated pest management keeps them below damaging levels.
- Post-harvest operation
Sun Drying
Sun drying uses free solar energy and air movement to reduce the moisture of grain, pulses, and other produce for safe storage. It is widely used by smallholders but is weather-dependent and carries contamination and re-wetting risks.
- Post-harvest operation
Threshing and Shelling
Threshing and shelling separate grain or seed from the plant structures that hold it — the ear, head, pod, or husk — so the grain can be cleaned, dried, and stored. Done poorly, they cause grain damage and loss.
- Post-harvest operation
Washing and Sanitising
Washing removes soil and field debris from produce. It also puts every unit in a lot in contact with the same water, which makes wash water the most efficient contamination-spreading mechanism in a packhouse — and explains why the sanitiser is there to treat the water, not the produce.
- Post-harvest operation
Waxing
Waxing applies a thin edible coating to fruit — mainly citrus and apples — largely to replace the natural wax that washing removed. It restricts water loss and restores gloss, but the same barrier restricts gas exchange, and too much of it suffocates the fruit.
- Post-harvest operation
Winnowing
Winnowing separates grain from chaff using moving air. It is the oldest post-harvest operation still in daily use, unchanged in principle from a basket in the wind to the aspirator in a combine, and it sorts by aerodynamic behaviour rather than by weight.
- Post-harvest operation
Wooden Crate
The wooden crate is strong, locally made from local material, and repairable with a hammer. It is also porous, splintery, and impossible to clean properly — which is why it persists at the field end of chains and has been pushed out of the retail end.
- Post-harvest operation
Woven Polypropylene Sack
The woven polypropylene sack is cheap, strong, and rot-proof, and it has taken most of the world's bagged commodity trade on those merits. It is also slippery in a stack, degrades in sunlight, sheds fibrils into the crop, and does not go away.
Sources
This article draws on the following authoritative sources. See our sources & methodology for how they are selected.
- [1]FAO — Food and Agriculture Organization (opens in a new tab)Authoritative
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Cited for: Post-harvest loss reduction and handling guidance
- Type:
- Intergovernmental organization
- Jurisdiction:
- Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-12
- [2]USDA ARS — Agricultural Research Service (opens in a new tab)Authoritative
USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
Cited for: Post-harvest storage and quality research
- Type:
- Government agency
- Jurisdiction:
- United States
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-12