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    An integrated experimental and numerical approach to understand and address airflow and cooling variation in refrigerated shipping containers with kiwifruit pallets : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Food Technology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 16 December 2026.
    (Massey University, 2024-11-26) Alaka, Abdulquadri
    New Zealand's kiwifruit industry has been the most significant contributor to the country’s horticultural export value for many years. Despite facing recent unseasonable weather conditions and labour shortage challenges, the kiwifruit industry contributed approximately 38.5 % to New Zealand's total horticultural export value in 2023. NZ kiwifruit and other horticultural produce earnings largely come from distant markets such as Europe, Japan and China, representing one of the longest supply chains in the world. NZ's expanding kiwifruit export volume heavily relies on refrigerated containers to preserve and maintain fruit quality along the supply chain. This is vital to ensure that the industry continues supplying its overseas customers with high-quality products and attracting significant export earnings. Refrigerated containers are designed to maintain cargo temperature throughout transit. However, sub-optimal airflow distribution inside containers when fully loaded with pallets of fruit often results in temperature variation within the cargo. Unfortunately, such temperature variation comes with a significant economic disadvantage as it results in fruit losses via chilling and, or freezing injury as well as senescence. It also leads to variations in the quality of fruit of the same batches, complicating inventory management along the supply chain. Improving the airflow distribution within stowed refrigerated containers can go a long way in improving temperature or cooling uniformity within the system. This project combined experimental and computational approaches to understand and improve airflow and cooling uniformity inside containers stowed with kiwifruit pallets.--Shortened abstract
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    Model-based packaging design for minimising environmental impact of horticultural packaging systems : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Food Technology at Massey University, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 13 November 2026.
    (Massey University , 2024) Lozano, Raquel
    Packaging systems are instrumental in delivering high-quality food products to consumers. Food industries grapple with losses throughout the supply chain, resulting in both product and monetary setbacks. When considering the embodied resources in food production, including raw materials, energy, water, and emissions, minimising losses in any stage of the food supply chain is crucial. The New Zealand kiwifruit industry faces several constraints which include short harvest seasons, considerable distance to markets and year-round consumer demand. Packaging and storage plays a role in overcoming these factors by preventing undesirable quality loss traits. Establishing the link between packaging systems, supply chain conditions, and kiwifruit quality (specifically shrivel) provides a basis for evaluating the trade-off between over-packaging and excessing fruit loss. In this thesis, an integrated-mathematical model was developed to aid decision-making in for kiwifruit packaging, aiming to minimise the overall environmental impact throughout the kiwifruit supply chains from packhouse to purchase. This integrated-mathematical model facilitates exploratory analysis of both current and future supply chains and packaging systems. Four models were integrated: mass balance, moisture loss prediction, shrivel loss prediction and an optimisation engine. The mass balance model captured the kiwifruit and packaging masses and associated environmental impacts within kiwifruit supply chains. This model, applicable to any environmental metric, was developed to facilitate the prediction of kiwifruit losses. To validate its accuracy, the framework was applied in assessment examples, comparing its performance against existing research for kiwifruit supply chains. The absolute difference between predicted and actual emissions of CO2eq were less than 1% of the actual mean emissions at different stages of the supply chain. The moisture loss model was used to estimate kiwifruit weight loss both on a packaging unit and individual kiwifruit basis. The model demonstrated close agreement between weight loss predictions and experimental data for average packaging weight loss scenarios. Further refinement is needed to predict individual kiwifruit weight loss, specifically considering the impacts of packaging features on internal packaging water vapour distributions. The shrivel prediction model revealed that predicting kiwifruit losses due to shrivel posed challenges, primarily due to the current knowledge gap regarding the development of shrivel in kiwifruit under storage conditions. While increases in shrivel has been correlated to weight loss in existing literature, the reference state (at orchard, packhouse etc.) is arbitrary. Ideally shrivel would be related to an intrinsic property that could be measured at any point in time without requiring knowledge of this prior history of the fruit. The prediction of losses based on a non-relative starting point represents a knowledge gap addressed in this work, with potential improvements identified for future model iterations. This phase of the model development heavily relied on data collection to establish a mathematical relationship between weight loss and shrivel. The moisture loss and shrivel model served as the foundation for the development of an optimisation engine, enabling the identification of the optimal use of packaging. This model sought a balance between packaging mass and kiwifruit losses, employing various environmental impact categories as performance metrics. The success of this approach was evident as optimal packaging points were identified across (i) different packaging materials, (ii) different packaging materials and formats and (iii) different environmental impact categories. It was found that each optimum point for materials were unique to the ambient conditions of the supply chain, packaging format and material. This work revealed trade-offs between the environmental impact of the packaging material and amount of kiwifruit loss, numerically demonstrating what so far has only been presented as a theoretical concept in other research. Then, this integrated-model was applied to a range of real-life supply chain scenarios showcasing its versatility in addressing possible questions such as ‘what if ?’, ‘can we ?’ and ‘when can we ?. The application of the model to real-life scenarios demonstrated its utility for decision-making with respect to packaging materials and formats. This model is poised to offer crucial support for future packaging materials and supply chains. The limitation of this model lies in fruit loss predictions. To further model applicability, there remains further investigation of hypotheses developed during shrivel model development to refine the kiwifruit loss model. There also remains the opportunity to integrate more prediction models that account for the impact of packaging on other drivers of fruit loss, such as ethylene concentrations within the pack. While the integrated model developed in this thesis has some limitations in accurately predicting kiwifruit losses, this study highlights the significance of linking packaging performance and kiwifruit quality when evaluating environmental impacts. Although kiwifruit served as the focus in this work, the model created here paves the way for exploring the application of optimised packaging systems for other food commodities.
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    Application of UV-C technology in extending the shelf life of fresh blueberries : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Food Technology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 1st August 2027
    (Massey University, 2024) Akram, Sidra
    Fresh blueberry fruit is highly perishable and susceptible to spoilage by bacteria and fungi resulting in a short postharvest shelf life. Ultraviolet light treatment (UV-C) in the range is considered an emerging novel food processing technique that can be used to improve fruit quality and thus prolong the shelf life. The study investigated the impact of UV-C light treatment on untreated fresh blueberry farthing variety. The study was conducted in three phases to analyse and optimize the most suitable dosages to be applied to the sample and determine its effects on the fruit sample during the 14 days of storage at 4°C. The fruit sample was collected from a local blueberry farm and transported to the Massey University, Auckland campus. In phase one, the fresh blueberry fruit was treated with different dosages of UV-C (50, 100, 200, 300, 400, 600 mJ/cm²) using a JouleSafe disinfection system. Focus group sensory evaluation was used to analyse the consumer acceptance of the UV-C treated fruit alongside the microbial enumeration to narrow down the range of dosages.--Shortened abstract.
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    Sustainable food packaging : potential of using fibres from hemp hurd for thermoformed moulded pulp food packaging : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Food Technology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 20 July 2026.
    (Massey University, 2021) Lo, Chi Hou
    There is currently high demand for sustainable packaging solutions, and also for new, sustainable fibre sources beyond traditional wood-based options. The aim of the work in this thesis was to evaluate whether hemp hurd fibre, a low value waste stream from the hemp industry, could be used to manufacture moulded pulp trays for food serviceware as a replacement for the single use plastic tray currently used. The hemp hurd was pulped and mixed in varying ratios with pine pulp to form handsheets. The handsheets were treated using different thermoforming conditions and the resulting performance determined. Handsheets based on mechanically pulped pine fibre and chemically pulped hemp hurd fibres were investigated, and characterised by several tests including tensile, tearing, bursting, short-span compression, ring crush, Gurley, contact angle and Cobb testing. The handsheets made from hemp hurd had promising mechanical properties and barrier performance compared to mechanically pulped pine fibres which were chosen to represent the relatively cheap pine pulps used in moulded fibre products industrially. This difference in performance is because the collapsed fibres in chemically pulped hemp hurd resulted in larger bonded areas.--Shortened abstract