Pre-process handling
Vegetables at peak flavour and texture are used for freezing. Postharvest delays in handling vegetables are known to produce deterioration in flavour, texture, colour, and nutrients (Lee, 1989). Therefore, the delays between harvest and processing should be reduced to retain fresh quality prior to freezing. Cooling vegetables by cold water, air blasting, or ice will often reduce the rate of post-harvest losses sufficiently, providing extra hours of high quality retention for transporting raw material to considerable distances from the field to the processing plant (Deitrich et al., 1977).