Introduction and Career in Food Technology

Introduction

Food technology, yes the most favorite branch of female under-graduates to join. May be the trend differs in your country, but here in Pakistan, females of my batch and now my agriculture students are crazy to join this branch of agricultural science. In the agriculture degree program, Food Technology is consider as a premium specialization subject. If you are pursuing a career in agriculture, Food Technology is a good option.

There was a time a decade ago when I had to choose a subject to specialize among many others (horticulture, soil science, plant pathology, agriculture extension, agronomy etc.) at the end of 4^th semester of B. Sc. (HONS.) Agricultural Program. My first choice was also food technology. However, later due to unavoidable circumstances, I selected Agricultural Economics. But that doesn’t mean food technology is not my favorite anymore. The reason is simple. My love for food is not a hidden truth. 🙂

Coming back to the topic, let me introduce you with food technology. It is a branch of agriculture (and in many cases it is also regarded as branch of food sciences) that deals with the practices of production that makes food. Many food scientists consider Nicolas Appert as a pioneer who laid foundation stone of food technology when he first tried to preserve food by a canning process in 1810. In fact early food tech. procedures were concerned more with food preservation. Then Louis Pasture’s work in 1864 on evading spoilage of wine paved the path to handle food in scientific manner.

Food technology is the application of food science for selection, processing, packaging, preservation and distribution of food in a safe mode. Now at this point, question arises, what is food science then? Well food science deals with physical, chemical and biological makeup of food. It also deals with exploring reasons of food deterioration. Summarizing, food science deals with the concepts that are underlying food processing as a whole.

Career in Food Technology

Food technology is a wide field of science. As far as its career opportunities are concerned, these are vast also. Why? Demand for food is never going to end. In fact, the demand will increase with the population explosion we are witnessing globally. With the inventions of innovative modes of food manufacturing, the taste of people is also changing.

In short, today demand of food from taste perspective is different and complex as compare to 2-3 decades ago. Similarly, features like quality control and quality assurance are also playing significant role in increasing demand of food scientists.

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