Date canning: a new approach for the long time preservation of date.

Dramatic growth in date (Phoenix dactylifera L.) production, makes it clear to apply proper methods to preserve this nutritious fruit for a long time. Numerous methods have been used to gain this goal in recent years that can be classified into non-thermal (fumigation, ozonation, irradiation, and packaging) and thermal (heat treatment, cold storage, dehydration, jam etc.) processing methods. In this paper these methods were reviewed and novel methods for date preservation were presented.