Post-harvest meets in Sicily

The international conference on Post-Harvest Management of Mediterranean Crops, POSTHARVESTMED, will be held in the evocative setting of the Palermo Botanical Garden from 17 to 19 September 2025.

This event is a benchmark for the scientific and professional community involved in the post-harvest management of Mediterranean fruit and vegetables. Promoted by the SOI Postraccolta Group in collaboration with the Spanish group SECH Postcosecha, the symposium also celebrates the 31st anniversary of the Italian group's foundation in 1994.

This year's edition promises to be particularly enriching and well-attended: more than 100 researchers, professors, technicians and professionals from Italy and Spain have already registered, demonstrating the growing attention to the challenges and opportunities offered by innovation in the post-harvest supply chain.

Strategic topics

POSTHARVESTMED 2025 will provide an opportunity to discuss strategic topics such as new digital technologies applied to post-harvest processing, artificial intelligence for determining the quality of fruit and vegetables, environmental and food sustainability, innovative packaging and preservation methods that extend the shelf life of vegetables, fruit and flowers while maintaining their nutritional and organoleptic characteristics.

The programme

The programme includes three days of diverse scientific content and opportunities for sharing. The first day will be devoted to opening speeches and technical-scientific sessions on the ripening, quality and preservation of fruit and vegetables after harvesting.

The second day will offer participants a technical visit to Oranfrizer, a Sicilian company specialising in the processing of blood oranges and NFC juices, followed by a social dinner in the natural setting of the Botanical Garden.

The last day will feature experts in sustainability and innovation in packaging, with an institutional round table summarising the results of the conference.

Sicily, a crossroads of cultures

It is no coincidence that the event is being held in Palermo: Sicily has always been a crossroads of cultures and a centre of excellence in Mediterranean agricultural production.

The Botanical Garden, with its history and biodiversity, will be the ideal setting to welcome prestigious speakers specially invited to the conference, such as Francisco Artés-Hernández, Luis Cisneros-Zevallos, Daniel Neuwald, Maria Cefola and Duccio Caccioni, who will open the event.

Research-business dialogue

The POSTHARVESTMED conference is not just a technical conference, but an opportunity for dialogue between research and business, between academia and producers. It is a space where Italian and Spanish experiences come together, combine and jointly build concrete solutions for the future of Mediterranean agri-food.

With over a hundred participants already confirmed, the 2025 edition promises to be one of the liveliest and most popular in history. For professionals in the sector as well as students and researchers, the POSTHARVESTMED conference in Palermo is an exclusive event not to be missed.

It has prominent sponsors such as ISOLCELL, a specialist in Controlled Atmospheres and DAC, Dynamic Controlled Atmospheres.

Both images are from the Palermo Botanical Garden, headquarters of PostharvestMED