There are three current realities which are addressed in this book. They are as follows: that there is a high incidence of post-harvest loss and a corresponding magnitude of shortage in research and development work on tropical fresh produce; that the global flow of information is increasing while agricultural labour is becoming scarcer and more expensive; and that tropical produce engineering technology must be thoroughly understood. Accordingly, the author makes two recommendations: for producer countries to instigate a dramatic increase in the research and development that they conduct into tropical fresh produce, and in the support that they provide for this research; and that the research trend should cover all economic tropical fruit and vegetable goods grown in the producer countries and all aspects of engineering technology that they use, with a particular emphasis on developing computerised non-destructive techniques for quality assurance.