Flender/Flender Gear Units/Bevel-helical gear units B4
treatment (.., irradiation fol- lowed by heating) was found to be more synergistic; the effect of heating followed byirradiation seemed

to be additive or only slightly more than additive (Farkas and Roberts,. Unfortunately, few other fruits can tolerate treatments at

such high doses. Several investigations have demonstrated the usefulness of mild heat treatment prior 6 Lacroix et al. Fig. 6

Rotating index of irradiated mangoes with or without hot water treatment (hw). to low-dose irradiation in extending the shelf life

of certain fresh fruits without affecting their normal quality. The heat treatment used during these experiments was generally hot water dip. For fresh fruits and vegetables, it is important to establish exact parameters such as proper ripening stage and proper pretreatment, posttreatment, and transport condi-tions to yield optimal results (Langerak, In South African studies, the combination of hot water dipping (5 , 5 min) for mangoes and 5 for 1 min in papayas waxing and irradiation (0.7 kGy), and low- temperature storage and shipment (7 C1C) has been shown to be particularly effective in controlling fungus and insect attack and in delaying senescence (Thomas, . Trans-portation trials from South Africa to Europe demonstrated that combination-treated man-goes and papayas may be transported long distances with much lower losses in quality than untreated lots (Brodick and Thomas, . The combined treatment of mild heat and low-dose irradiation also offers possibilities for delayed ripening and reduction ofmicrobial spoilage of tomatoes (Langerak, and mangoes (Gagnon, et al., 1;Lacroix et al., In 1, project was initiated by MDS-Nordion International Inc., the Canadian Irradiation Centre (CIC), the Research Centre of Sciences Applied to Food (CRESALA), and the Ofce of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP) in Tha land to investigate the possibil- ity of using ionizing radiation in combination with hot water dip treatment to achievelonger fresh