RIPENING FRUIT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 29

RIPENING FRUIT

ARTIFICIAL METHOD SUCCESSFUL The chemists have now discovered a method of artificial ripening which may be of great service. The substance is known as Ethylene, and in the process, green fruits are treated with a gaseous mixture in an airtight chamber at a warm temperature. The fruit is so packed in the chamber that there is a free circulation of air. The process causes changes in the cell-walls of the i.ruits, just as in natural ripening. They become sweeter, the flavour is increased exactly as wben the fruits are 1 ipening on the tree, it is claimed. The system is sponsored by Dr. Harvey, of Cambridge University, | England. ; He states in “Science” that it has been successfully used by hundreds of | fruit jobbers to produce quicker ripen j ing and a product of superior flavour, j Workers in the U.S. department of agriculture report that they found "no material difference between treated and untreated fruits,” but this, Dr. Harvey shows, was due to a wrong mixture. He recommends one part of Ethylene to a thousand of air and they used only one part of five thousand. They also objected to it because the “fruit could not be Shipped after ripening.” The essence of the discovery is that the fruit is processed after shipping. It may travel ..green and hard and be vipened after arrival.