**1. Introduction**

Fruits are integral part of our balance diet. These provide many phytochemicals that adds variety to the diet and cure many nutrient related disorders. Food security is a major burning aspect especially in developing countries. The production has been increasing day by day but quality concept has left into backseat. Despite, increasing the food production, the postharvest shelf life and retention of quality up-to a sufficient level is still needed a lot of attention. It is well known that fruits are living commodity and more prone to postharvest decay so, they require proper management to retain quality and shelf life. The quality and shelf life of produce is affected by many preharvest factors like genotype and rootstocks [1], nutrients and foliar spray [2], quality of water [3] tree age and canopy management [4, 5] use of growth hormones and several postharvest factors like precooling, edible coatings, use of postharvest fungicides, controlled and modified storage techniques, etc. The main causes of postharvest losses are weight loss, loss of pigmentation, storage

diseases and disorders and physiological changes. The rate of deterioration varies and largely depends upon intrinsic characters of produces, storage conditions and state of produces during storage [6].

The major aim of postharvest technology is to optimize and reducing the losses during unit operations by adopting the emerging technologies. There is a strong lacuna of sound postharvest management for quality retention during supply chain [7]. Existing technologies are insufficient to reduce these postharvest losses. Moreover, the awareness towards harmful chemicals, sanitizers, coatings materials and other unsafe chemicals forced the research community to invent alternatives of these technologies. To meet out the satisfactory results, several researchers applied these technologies to induce shelf life and maximize the quality of fresh fruits. These includes edible and nonedible coatings, use of salts, postharvest spray of different phytohormones, irradiation treatment, etc., but side by side, these existing technologies are being replaced with new emerging technologies. With the advancement of technology and science, many recent trends have come into existence, and they are safe to health and environment and consumer friendly. Among major recent approaches, some technologies are applied use of brassinosteroids (BRs), methyl jasmonates (MeJA), oxalic acid (OA), salicylic acid (SA), application of edible coatings and films, irradiation, use of biocontrol agents and advance storage techniques like controlled atmospheric storage and modified atmospheric packaging which really revolutionized the postharvest industry (**Table 1**). Application of these technologies proven a milestone in the supply chain management of fresh commodities and made them more market oriented by addition of some extra quality. The application methodology and concentration are specific to formulation and nature of products. Some of them are novel phytohormones which enhance the defense system of fruits and help in achieving delayed ripening and senescence. Edible coatings are also used solely or in mixture with other coatings which help in reducing the firmness and retention of quality. In addition to that, some nanomaterials, fortified materials, antimicrobials, etc. can be added to the coating mixtures which significantly reduce the microbial contamination and increase the quality. Some recent storage atmosphere techniques are available which reduce the storage disorders and also enhance the shelf life. In this chapter we jotted down the different technologies and their mechanism application, and efficacy for enhancing the quality and shelf life of the fruits.
