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Montreal Gazette - Gases are key to how fruits, veggies ripen
Published: 4 July 2010
Chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz: It's alive! The banana's alive. So is the broccoli and the asparagus and the melon. A new horror聽movie? No. But real-life horror for fruit and vegetable marketers.
Such聽produce contains living cells that continue to "respire" even after聽picking. Just like us, they inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and聽water. During respiration, which is exactly the opposite of聽photosynthesis, oxygen reacts with stored glucose, and provides the energy聽needed to fuel the reactions we interpret as "ripening."