Functional Properties of Fresh Fruit Produce

Riadh Ilahy, PhD, is currently working as an Associate Professor at the National Agricultural Research Institute of Tunisia, Department of Horticulture. He is specialized in breeding for higher nutritional quality crops, mainly tomato and potato. He has published three book chapters, 17 communications/posters, and more than 33 scientific articles. He has acted as an external examiner as well as paper reviewer for many internationally indexed journals. He was awarded the Amitom Young Researcher Prize from HM Clause for his research on chloroplast/chromoplast of high-pigment tomato. He earned his PhD after collaboration with Professor Marcello Salvatore Lenucci and Professor Giuseppe Dalessandro from the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. His research interest are in horticultural crop breeding, phytochemistry, natural antioxidants, food chemistry, and postharvest management.

Imen Tlili, PhD, is currently working as a researcher in the Department of Horticulture at the National Agricultural Research Institute of Tunisia. She is specialized in breeding for higher nutritional quality crops, mainly cucurbits. She has published two book chapters, 17 communications/posters, and more than 30 scientific articles. She has acted as an external examiner, paper reviewer for many international indexed and impacted journals. Her research interests are in horticultural crop breeding, phytochemistry, natural antioxidants, and agriculture. She was awarded her PhD in Phytochemistry in 2011.

Thouraya R'him, PhD, is currently working as a permanent Researcher in the Department of Horticulture at the National Agricultural Research Institute of Tunisia. She is specialized in selection and breeding, plant physiology, and environmental stress, mainly of pepper. She has published communications/posters and more than 30 scientific articles. She has acted as an external examiner and paper reviewer for many international indexed and impact factor journals. She earned her baccalaureate degree (Experimental Sciences) from the secondary school, Monastir. She also earned a Diploma of Engineering in Horticultural Sciences from the Higher School of Horticulture and lanscape of Chott Meriem, Sousse, Tunisia. Afterwards, she was awarded a diploma of in-depth studies in plant eco-physiology from the Faculty of Science, Tunis, Tunisia. She received her PhD (Plant Production) from the National Agricultural Institute of Tunisia (INAT). Her research interests include, horticultural crop breeding, environmental stress, and plant physiology.

Muhammad Azam, PhD, is an as Associate Professor at the Institute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has more than 14 years of experience in research and teaching. He completed his research work on citrus volatiles during his PhD in Zhejiang University, China. He worked as a consultant on a Citrus GlobalGAP certification project, Bhalwal, Sargodha, Pakistan. He is actively working and participating in different national and international projects. He is working as principal investigator and co-principal investigator for six projects and has been working in collaboration with local and international institutions. He has supervised 32 MSc students, and four PhD students are working under his supervision on different projects. He has published research papers in peer-reviewed journals as well as several book chapters, popular brochures, abstract books, popular articles in Urdu and English, some for the farming community.