About the Conference

Today, the food and bioprocess industry strives to provide a wide variety of products with enhanced shelf-life, functionality and quality attributes, and to develop new technologies in order to meet the demands of people from different cultural and working backgrounds. Despite the success of the industry, public concerns about product safety, nutritional value, and environmental impacts have become overwhelming in recent times. Such concerns accentuate the need for comprehensive scientific research and innovations to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of food and agricultural processes.

Developments in food processing technology and engineering are vital in making a wide variety of safe, palatable and nutritious foods available year around. Food safety issues, traceability, rapid detections methods and treated foods have arisen during this period. This requires greater understanding of food processing operations for ensuring high quality and safety of foods as well as better utilization of existing technologies and adoption of new innovative technologies. Therefore, the adoption of novel food processing and preservation technologies will continue to grow in the future to produce value-added and tasty foods available in a variety of forms.

Technology transformation is not a matter of quick fixes but requires visionary planning and long-term scientific commitment. Novel Food Processing Technologies covers a range of food processing treatments that meet current demands for added value and guaranteed safety and contains separate sections dedicated to high pressure, pulsed electric fields, microwave applications, freezing and packaging methods, and predictive microbiology.

Convergence of knowledge from different disciplines is important to achieve a better understanding of these complex and interlinked problems but also for a cross-fertilization of ideas and a better exploitation of new opportunities for Indian agriculture. Anticipating the future is difficult and the complexity and uncertainties associated with the variety of challenges being faced demand for a broadening of the research perspective in order to understand the dynamics and likely impacts on the food systems within India and elsewhere.

While assuming many new challenges in food processing sector, TNTDPC of CII is strongly committed to the sharing of knowledge and expertise. With a view to disseminate information on the new business opportunities and also to support the prospective entrepreneurs in making the right linkages with the technology providers, Tamil Nadu Technology Development & Promotion Center (TNTDPC) an autonomous society of Government of Tamil Nadu & Confederation of Indian Industry and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - Michigan State University (MSU) - Indian Horticulture Development Alliance (IHDA) are partnering in organizing the one-day conference on Agro Food Processing Technologies with the theme of Quality and Safety in Fruits and Vegetables Processing on 24 July 2009 at Hotel Park Sheraton, Chennai.

The conference address a full range of issues related to quality and safety in the food industry and their coverage includes the description of various modeling systems and their impact on food microbiology.

The conference agenda features speakers that will address the pressing issues surrounding current day food safety, packaging, research and development. Topics to be discussed include examining new innovative technologies, interdisciplinary networking opportunities, generating new R&D strategies, exploring potential partnerships for innovation, opportunities in photonics, optoelectronics, bio processing and Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems and technologies apply to food safety and security such as smart packaging, smart appliances and in-field pathogen detection.

The conference will provide an in-depth coverage of the emerging technologies in the field of food processing and lists out the major technology challenges such as Pulsed Electric Field applications in Food Processing, Radiation Processing of Foods, High Pressure Processing of Foods, Infrared Processing of Foods etc along with the technology adoption drivers. This conference will also profile noteworthy innovations across companies, institutes and universities worldwide.