Levantamento sobre perdas em frutas, legumes e hortaliças em feiras-livres no município de Londrina - PR

Abstract

Fruits and vegetables are of great importance for human consumption, resulting from their high content of minerals, vitamins, fibers and antioxidants. A negative characteristic of these products is attributed to their high perishability, requiring greater care and better preservation processes. It is noticed that in the productive chains of fruits and vegetables large amounts of losses occur, making the human consumption of these products unfeasible and accentuating losses to the merchant, producer and consumer who will have less food available. Brazil is an important fruit producer, which has reached third place in the world ranking in tons produced, reaching 45 million tons. The objective of the study was to develop a study through three free-trade fairs in the city of Londrina-PR, where the local vegetables were analyzed, as well as their quality, classifying losses due to mechanical damage, rotting or wilting. It also quantified the total losses in the stalls, as well as the most sold and lost products during the sales, besides the purchase of four vegetables (apple, tomato, orange and zucchini) was made to properly classify and evaluate the products for possible damages. The losses to the total of fruits and vegetables reached the value of 14.52% being the rot like the biggest cause of wastes. Tomato, tangerine, orange and banana were the products with the highest losses, while tomato and poncho were coincidentally the most sold. Of the four products purchased only the zucchini showed slight damage or scars on its surface, reducing its quality. It is concluded that losses by fruits, vegetables and vegetables are inevitable, but there are possibilities for a decrease in the amount of waste, by means of actions by the marketers and clients.