Mission: To provide environmentally sound, economically viable systems, treatments, and processes that control quarantine pests, ensure product quality, food safety, and increase product value.

Areas of Research:

• Develop and commercialize postharvest treatments of systems that ensure product quality and marketability, while controlling quarantine pests to meet regulatory standards for opening or maintaining export markets.
  
• Improve or develop processes and products that enhance quality and add value to export commodities.
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  Conduct research on handling, storage, packaging, and transportation systems that enhance commodity quality and facilitate market access.
  
  
• Provide reliable methods, processes and strategies to identify, count and control microorganisms that effect the quality and safety of foods; to reduce the risk of microbial contamination in agricultural products; and to use tools to identify critical control points and assessment factors for hazard analysis.