21 Nov 2013
The VI International Conference on Managing Quality in Chains (MQUIC 2013) was held with the International Society for Horticultural Science at Cranfield University on 2 - 5 September 2013. The conference was supported by SCI and several companies including It'sFresh!, AgroFresh, and Sensitech. Over 150 delegates (industrialists and academics) from more than 40 countries attended the first international postharvest conference to take place in the United Kingdom for nearly 25 years.
The conference was opened by this year's convener Prof Leon Terry and covered the entire supply chain, including the key topics of reducing waste, new postharvest technologies and integrated supply chain management.
The plenary lecture was given by Dr Ian Ferguson, who gave an insight into the future of postharvest science and barriers to uptake. Keynote talks were given on a range of topics and included presentations by Prof Pietro Tonutti, who talked about supply chain stressors, Prof Bart Nicolai who presented work on computer modelling of fruit, Prof Chris Watkins who gave an informative review on 1-MCP responses in apples and an entertaining talk by Dr Ed Moorhouse on quality management in the 'real' world. There were also keynote presentations by Mr Johnathan Sutton, Dr Sukhvinder Singh, Mr Alan Wilson, Prof Linus Opara and Dr Elizabeth Mitcham.
The conference was an opportunity for researchers from different disciplines to come together to discuss their individual work and see how it fits with other studies along the full supply chain. There was a very popular session on ethylene, which included a number of interesting presentations covering a variety of strategies for the management of ethylene production from novel detection methods to mitigation strategies.
The next conference will be MQUIC2017 hosted in South Africa by Prof Linus Opara of Stellenbosch University.
Clare Tovee
Assistant Editor - Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
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