Preserving Fruit.

Hastings Standard, Issue 123, 17 September 1896, Page 4

Preserving Fruit.

A NEW METHOD.

Fruit-growers are now turning their attention to the dry-air process of preserving fruit. An American named Dr Perkins some time ago became inbued with the idea that if fruit could be kept free of germs of bacteria and always at a proper temperature it would keep good and sound for as many months as it would days under ordinary circumstances. Mr Perkins concluded that if he could purify the air in the fruit chamber, and free it of every microbe that is hurtful to the fruit, he could transport such produce around the world in a fresh condition. Fruitgrowers are all much interested in this subject, and they will be glad to learn that the Perkins system is proving highly successful in the United States. A representative of the firm is now In Victoria, and he asserts that the process is specially valuable to the fruitgrowers of Australia and New Zealand, whose produce has to be reserved for several weeks before being old in London. New South Wales and Tasmania conjointly recently sent Mr F. W. Hudson, of Sydney, to America to report on the Perkins scheme, and Mr Sinclair, the Victorian representative in London, has also been making inquiries. In their opinion the process is a great success. Mr Hudson, of Sydney, in his last letter reports that the process, first of all raises the temperature of the air by compression to a point sufficiently high to sterilise it, it next cools the air by expansion to the desired temperature, then liberates this cooled, purified, dry atmosphere being circulated throughout the whole chamber evenly, not, as in the case of the so-called dry-air machines, in a blast, the temperature of which varies as the air travels to the outlets, but in thin streams of air. The process next provides for the constant exhaustion of the air employed, thus ensuring a regular supply of the pure sterilised air, the whole process being worked automatically. If the method of handling fruit be correct, the time is coming when we shall hear no more complaints of rotten fruit. The news is perhaps too good to be true.