Study on how to Minimize Post - Harvest Damage to Vegetables dring Road Transport

Abstract

Agriculture is the main livelihood of Sri Lankans. Sri Lanka vegetables produces around 710000 metric tons annually (Weerasinghe & Priyadharsan, 2017). There are over 30% in vegetables been wasted while passing through the supply chain from farm gate to the final consumer. Improper harvest handling, improper packaging and transportation, disease and inadequate storage facilities for the increase in post-harvest waste. As a result of this reasons, a significant amount of the product is destroyed. Vegetables are transported in Sri Lanka through various modes of transport. But most developing countries, priority has been given to road transport. In handling the overall postharvest waste in vegetable production, a significant waste occurs during transportation. Thus, the loss due to post-harvest vegetable damage affects producers as well as consumers. Producers lose out by reducing their share of the price paid by customers and consumer must pay higher price for substandard vegetables. The economy would be losses crores of rupees due to total cost of the losses of vegetables. vegetables are lost during postharvest operations and the value of this loss is approximately Rs. Million 9000 (Cardoen et al., 2015). The maximum amount of food loss and waste is a mismatch between supply and demand (Raut et al., 2019). In this way, the wastage generated by transport also influences the difference between supply and demand. Accordingly, the wastage caused by this transport affects the entire economy. Here I studied on how to reduce the wastage of vegetable through road transport. But I conducted these investigations with the Manning market. However, these data may change if the research is centered on another economic center. And I used a questionnaire method to collect this data. But if the data is collected in another way, this data may change. I also considered this research road transport mode, but this data may change in other modes of vegetable transport. On the other hand, I should have done this research at a time when the corona epidemic is spreading rapidly. However, these data may change if this research is performed at normal period. Because of that reason the findings are difficult to generalize in into another context. Therefore, future decision should identify or use this concept or the information(finding) with keeping that limitation in their mind.