Potential of High Hydrostatic Pressure to Improve the Production of Plants Used as Food

Abstract

High hydrostatic pressure (HHP) is one of the nonthermal food treatment practices. While using HHP in food processing, the food samples are sealed in its final package and subjected to a high level of isostatic pressure. The pressure applied on food samples ranges from 100 to 800MPa or in some cases even higher pressures, where water is used as a pressure-transmitting medium. HHP is used in food processing for several purposes, such as sterilization, coagulation, and gelation. Besides food processing, there are some other potential uses of HHP in different areas, such as conducting HHP on plants used as food to change some physiological and biochemical properties, which can be accepted as an improvement, when it is compared to the unpressurized plant samples. In addition, since HHP is a nonthermal food treatment method, it does not destroy the embryo in the seeds to some extent, which can, in contrast, be observed after thermal processing. Thus, HHP can be used safely to process the plant seeds.In this chapter, the potential of HHP on improving the production of plants used as food will be discussed.