## 5 Challenges and Future Perspectives of Sea Cucumber Processing  
After harvesting, autolysis starts in sea cucumbers because of endogenous enzymes, microbial attacks, and other environmental factors that can degrade the sea cucumber body composition. Due to this, conventional boiling pre-treatment is required to inactivate the endogenous proteinases to stop the autolysis [93]. However, appropriate temperature and time are crucial for boiling to obtain a good-quality sea cucumber. These two factors can be optimized in terms of the thickness and texture of various species of sea cucumbers. High temperatures can significantly impact the nutritional quality of sea cucumber as boiling above 100 \({}^{\circ}\)C drastically reduces the amino acid content [26]. Moreover, the collagen fibre of sea cucumber could be broken and denatured in the range of the temperature from 60 to 100 \({}^{\circ}\)C [26; 55]. Further, boiling was reported to cause the loss of minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, saponins, and spermidine in sea cucumbers by 25%, 11%, 33%, 41%, and 100% (\(w\)/\(w\)), respectively [47]. However, modern processing techniques such as high-pressure steam and steaming cause 3.2% and 1.4% less protein losses, respectively, in the body wall of sea cucumber compared to traditional boiling. Though a high temperature during processing resulted in the hydrolysis of some proteins and amino acids, most of the amino acids, such as phenylalanine, leucine, asparagine, and tyrosine, remained stable [62]. HPP can deactivate the autolytic enzyme, but enzymes cannot be fully denatured using this method due to the product quality potentially deteriorating during storage [53; 58]. Further, sea cucumber texture quality, cooking yield, and water-holding capacity are affected by enzyme activity and protein denaturation, which are related to the various heating treatments [58]. Therefore, boiling pre-treatment with a higher temperature may reduce the content of protein, total sugar, saponin, and inorganic compounds, subsequently causing metabolite changes in sea cucumbers. However, proteins, lipids, and other components may be degraded/unaffected after boiling, but the release of amino acids and fatty acids is usually improved. Boiling is useful for the sea cucumber processing industries to prevent autolysis as well as maintain the overall chemical compositions [15; 47; 94; 95; 96]. [PERSON] et al. [58] reported that steaming at 100 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 30 min is good for the long-term preservation of sea cucumbers and boiling at 100 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 45 min is applicable for obtaining a high cooking yield and protein content. Hence, the integration of modern techniques along with traditional boiling at a proper temperature and time would provide a rationale to overcome the challenges of conventional boiling to obtain a good-quality product. Traditionally, salting is significantly more valuable for preserving the sea cucumber. However, local harvesters use fine salt, which damages the skin quality because of its high penetration [12]. Therefore, using coarse salt for salting pre-treatment is recommended to protect the sea cucumber body wall composition [9]. After pre-treatment, drying is required for further processing/preservation, such as grinding to extract nutrients and bioactive compounds, storage as edible products, and packaging as well as transportation. Sun drying is the most popular method for drying sea cucumbers conventionally. However, product quality can be drastically hampered by sun drying due to uncontrolled sunlight and other environmental contaminants, and products might be affected by insects, pests, rats, dogs, and many more [12; 29]. Local people use sun drying only for the body wall of sea cucumbers. However, sun drying is not useful for the drying of other internal organs, such as the viscera and aquapharyngeal bulbs of sea cucumbers.