APPLE MYSTERY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 425, 9 January 1933, Page 3

APPLE MYSTERY

BIOLOGISTS PUZZLED BY MANY UNSUSPECTED CHARACTERISTICS STRANGE EMANATIONS. In his presidential address to the British Association of Refrigeration in London, Sir William B. Hardy revealed some remarkahle facts about reeent research regarding app'les. At present biologists are puzzled by reason of hitherto unsuspected charactsristics, the chief of which is that some minute emanations from the fruit profoundly affect other vegetahle forms. "A stream of air which has passed over an apple," said Sir William, "would appear to be harmless to other forms of life, as it is sensibly unchanged chemically or physically. The appearance is wrong — the air contains some subtle emanations which profoundly influence other vegetahle forms. "Potatoes . placed in the stream either do not sprout or, if they do, the sprouts are misshapen dwarfs more like -warts than anything else. Bananas are excited to much more rapid ripening than ordinary. "Only elderly app'les pour out these emanations, and the effect on young, unripe apples is again curious, for they are stirred to more rapid progess. They ripen more quickly. It as though the elderly apple were jealous of youth, and would destroy it. . "The emanations are present in the

air in the most minute quantities. Their physiological activity must be prodigious, equalling' or even exeeeding that of snalce venom. Undoubtedly, they are chemical individuals, and an attempt is being made to identify them. It may sueceed, but the minute traces which alone are present make it ,difficul£. "Of what use is this' power to the apple?" he asked. "Why can it so influence its f ellow-vegetables ? In that and in the actual nature of the emanation lies the biological puzzle. "It has been known for some time that there is a kind of communal life, a herd quality, in apples when stored together. They tend to and, indeed, they do ripen at much the same rate. Are the agents of this communal control these, as yet, mysterious emanations ? "That may he. But of what use is it to apples, or to the trees which bear them, in their struggle for a place in the sun? Apples have no power of motion. They do not of their proper volition pack themselves in a box. Storage, indeed, from the apple point of view, Is an alien event forced upon it by certain two-legged machines. "That apples can so influence one another is, however, a fact of obvious eommercial signifiance."