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Pasteurization, sterilization and drying are the traditional methods used for food preservation. These methods pose problems like loss of nutrients and vitamins, enzymatic browning, prolonged processing time, fruit juice sedimentation and microbial spoilage. Increasing consumer demands for minimally processed high quality food products having natural flavour and taste which are free from additives and preservatives, paves the way for the development of non-thermal methods for food preservation. Sonication is one of the advanced technologies which can overcome these problems. Sonication is a non-thermal technology in which sound waves having frequency more than 18 kHz applied for processing and preservation of food without affecting the nutritional quality. Ultrasound proves its potential applications for fresh horticulture products in drying, fruit juice extraction, detection of foreign bodies, filtration and to control microbial contamination without compromising with their quality aspects. Thus, ultrasound can be one of the viable techniques for quality assurance and food safety.

Key words: Ultrasounds, Sonication, Non-thermal, Cavitation, Preservation