Radio Frequency and Microwave Alternative Treatments for Insect Control in Nuts: a Review

A major problem in the production, storage and marketing of nuts is the infestation of insect pests such as codling moth, naval orangeworm and Indian meal moth. Present and potential quarantine treatments for both domestic and international nut markets include chemical fumigation, ionizing radiation, controlled atmosphere, cold treatment, conventional hot air or water heating and dielectric heating using radio frequency (RF) and microwave (MW) energy. Based on the brief review of the above six methods, a comparison about their properties was carried out. An innovative technique using RF and MW heating treatments was proposed as an alternative quarantine treatment in nuts. The practical future application in industry should be possible after solving their problems of high cost, non-uniform heating and quality damage.