Piece-size reduction, which is required in preparing lettuce for salads, shortens storage life of cut lettuce as compared to uncut head lettuce. Cellular fluids, released during cutting, are removed by rinsing with water, followed by centrifugation to remove added surface moisture. Extended centrifugation can cause desiccation of product, which may be beneficial under certain conditions. Other methods of water removal, such as blotting or forced air did not seem practical. During storage green pigmentation decreased in salad-cut lettuce. Optimum cold storage was obtained by packaging the cut-lettuce in pouches that had been slightly evacuated and contained a small amount of carbon monoxide.

Numerous factors affect the storage stability of shredded Iceberg lettuce, with temperature being most important. Pouches of shredded lettuce stored at 2°C retained a marketable quality 2.5 times longer than those held at 10°C. Also, if the product was sealed in a gas impermeable container it lasted longer. In addition, a sharp blade exercising a slicing action was superior to either a sharp blade chopping or a duU blade slicing or chopping. Smaller shred size reduced storage life, as did the presence of any free moisture or cellular fluids on the lettuce surface. The higher the microbial load the shorter the storage life. Of the chemical dips tested none increased storage life significantly. Physical damaging of the shredded lettuce was detrimental to its storage stability.

Osmotic syrups can be reconcentrated and reused for osmotic water removal through at least five complete cycles without adversely affecting the fruit being concentrated, even though the properties of the osmotic medium do change. Syrup penetration rate into a fruit piece was faster with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) than sucrose. Taste panel evaluation indicated that overall, sucrose was preferred as an osmotic medium over HFCS.

Fresh peeled and halved apricots, peaches and pears were dipped in various solutions to retard product browning and texture loss during refrigerated storage. Calcium and zinc compounds were effective in reducing enzymatic browning. the addition of an oxygen scavenger into the packaged product significantly reduced texture loss from structural polymer breakdown for apricot and peach halves but not for pear halves. Oxygen reduction in packaged pears resulted in only slightly retarded texture loss.

Moisture sorption isotherms were determined for raisins and prunes, with raisins producing hysteresis at the lower and higher ends of the curves. Maturity of the fresh fruit influenced the sorption isotherms but not storage time. Optimum water activities for minimizing a product's degradation rate during storage were determined for prunes and raisins to be about 0.