PLANT-CELL AND TISSUE-CULTURES AS MODEL SYSTEMS FOR MONITORING THE IMPACT OF UNIT OPERATIONS ON PLANT FOODS

It is being increasingly realized that, in order to understand and control the effects of postharvest storage and processing operations on foods, it is important to study the changes at the cellular level. Investigations of such changes in plant tissue samples are hampered by interference from stress- and wound-related tissue responses that occur in diced plant tissues concurrently with any effects produced by a particular treatment or process. However, stable and homogenous plant cell cultures are attractive as model systems for studying the effects of unit processing operations on the biosynthetic pathways and structure of foods, in addition to providing a controlled system for studying the effects of environment on the accumulation and release of desired metabolites by plant cells. It is hoped that the examples given here will encourage further research efforts into cellular approaches to understanding food processing operations.