The influence of ozone technology on reduction of carrot loss and environmental IMPACT

More than half of the world’s agricultural products are lost and do not reach their consumers. Food production is rather energy-susceptible. To solve this problem, the solutions focused on reducing production loss without harming the environment and human health are developed. Thus, it is useful to preserve product quality and reducing the environmental impact incurred during the preparation of fresh carrots at the same time. It was assessed the extent of the effectiveness on the current loss of fresh carrots throughout the supply chain. The treatment of carrots with ozonated water not only reduces food loss, but also increases productivity. Ozonated water is introduced during the preparation of carrots for sale at farms where fresh carrots are made ready for trade, and at the final stage of processing, the products are sprayed with ozonated water, which allows the surface of the products to be disinfected. The evaluation of microbiological parameters where products were treated with ozonated water at 1.9 ± 0.1 mg L−1 rate and at a temperature of 3.0 ± 0.15 °C (RH – 90.45 ± 2.95%) products could be retained 1.8 times longer. The assessment of environmental impact of carrots commercial preparation technology was carried out with SimaPro 8.0.5 software, where two scenarios were compared using a standard carrot treatment line and another using product spray stage with ozonated water. It was established, that using an ozonized water and stored under optimal conditions, product losses could be decreased by 44.4% and the global warming, acidification and eutrophication potential decreased by 45.2%.