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First paragraph: Fruit and vegetables must be transferred from the field to the table, to arrive in a state that is acceptable to the consumer. Although traditional farm- and orchard-gate sales still can provide a useful income, the increasingly lucrative demand for year-round supplies from urban dwellers and international markets requires that there has to be an increasing level of handling, transportation, and storage of products. Unlike cereals, fruit and vegetables are essentially highly perishable commodities. Most fruit and vegetable crops begin to deteriorate as soon as they are harvested, and most are particularly prone to handling damage at all times. In general, the level of susceptibility of these products to handling damage is greatly underestimated, usually because the effects of mishandling do not appear until some time after the damage occurred.