Challenges and opportunities for agri-fresh food supply chain management in India

Due to the lack of effective and efficient supply chain management practices in India, approximately one-third of Agri-fresh products such as fruits and vegetables is wasted every year. Managing the supply chain of these products is a challenging task as the perishable nature of the product adds further complexity. The main focus of this work is to identify the existing challenges with respect to the supply chain drivers. Subsequently, the possible opportunities are presented to mitigate the effect of each identified challenge by taking the best possible decision(s) about the corresponding driver(s) so that the Indian Agri-fresh food supply chains (AFSCs) can be restructured to be both effective and efficient. The paper starts with presenting the existing AFSCs structure in the Indian context highlighting the roles and responsibilities of each player in the chain. A total of thirty-four challenges spanning across six drivers i.e., facilities, inventory, transportation, information, pricing, sourcing, and other aspects of the AFSCs are identified. Further, a total of six opportunities namely redesigning AFSCs, collaboration and coordination, enabling technologies, forecasting models, government roles and initiatives and investments are presented. Based on the analysis of Systematic literature review (SLR), it is observed that the challenges related to the drivers i.e., facilities and information have received more attention by the research community. On the other hand, the challenges incorporating the perishable nature of the Agri-fresh items like human resources, sustainability practices, packaging, quality, processing, etc. have received maximum attention. Lastly, a conceptual framework is developed that maps each challenge(s) to corresponding opportunity(ies) based on the specific suggestion(s) obtained from the past research for each challenge. The recommendations are derived from the conceptual framework to guide supply chain actors, researchers, policymakers and the government institutions in restructuring the AFSCs.