◆High temperature enhanced all biochemical reactions of green bamboo shoot after harvest.

• Quality declines
• The cut surface becomes brown and tough.

◆Traditional method for keeping fresh bamboo shoot

• Immerse in water
• Treat with sodium bisulfite
• Treat with salt solution

Farmers in Taiwan try to use the methods of immersing bamboo shoot in water or salt water traditionally to prevent quality losses. However, the methods are not effective enough to retain freshness of green bamboo shoots and some salts used are harmful to human health.

◆Innovative Techniques

• Measurement of central temperature for bamboo shoots at half-cooling time of hydro-cooling and forced-air cooling.

• As compared hydro-cooling with forced-air cooling, hydro-cooling could decrease the middle temperature rapidly down to 10 ℃ within 20 minutes which is shorter than forced-air cooling.

• According the results of series of researches, the precooling time significantly affected product temperature.
• Panel tests indicated that bamboo shoot quality was good in both precooling methods.

Hydro-cooling                                                                Forced-air cooling