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REVIEW article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Sustainable Food Processing
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1558985
Quality preservation of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) fruits at the Khalal stage: A review on current challenges, preservation methods, and future trends
Provisionally accepted- 1 Date Palm Research Center of Excellence, King Faisal University, P.O. Box 400, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia, Al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
- 2 Department of Food and Nutrition Sciences, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
Date palm fruits have great commercial value and spiritual and cultural significance in multiple countries due to their high nutritional value and various health benefits. Some popular date varieties such as Barhi, Hayani, Samany, and Zaghlol are harvested at the Khalal stage due to their unique organoleptic properties, including crunchy texture, delicious taste, and attractive color; therefore, they have a great consumer demand and significant market relevance. However, dates at the Khalal stage are facing three issues: (1) they are perishable due to the higher moisture and sugar content, (2) they are rapidly converted from the Khalal to Rutab stage (ripening), and (3) the short picking season, where huge quantities of the fruits reach the horticultural ripening during a short time. Therefore, delaying ripening, maintaining freshness, preventing spoilage, and extending the shelf-life represent the major challenges at the Khalal stage. Accordingly, this review discussed the main factors responsible for quality loss and shelf-life shortening of Khalal dates. Preservation methods, research needs, and future trends were also discussed. 2013). Due to their high nutritional and economic value, besides their importance in agroecosystems, dates have gained great importance in the global economy; consequently, the cultivated area and global production have significantly increased in the last few years (Singh et al., 2022). The FAO statistics for the year 2023 showed that the total planted area of date reached 1.29 million ha, and the total global production was 9.66 million tons per annum; among the top five producers, Saudi Arabia ranked second (Figure 1), with 1.64 million tons per annum (FAO, 2024).
Keywords: date palm, Post-harvest changes, Khalal stage, ripening, preservation
Received: 11 Jan 2025; Accepted: 04 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alqahtani and Ali. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Nashi K. Alqahtani, Date Palm Research Center of Excellence, King Faisal University, P.O. Box 400, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia, Al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
Salim A. Ali, Date Palm Research Center of Excellence, King Faisal University, P.O. Box 400, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia, Al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
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