A pair of Curtin University researchers has come up with a way of extending the shelf-life of vegetables, fruit and flowers by slowing down the process that leads to them spoiling.
The process has the potential to help reduce the billions of tonnes of food that are wasted worldwide each year.
Food and flowers ripen, and then over ripen and spoil, due to their natural production of ethylene gas.
The researchers have come up with compounds they've dubbed 'ethylene antagonists' (in chemistry an antagonist is a substance which inhibits another process).
The result is that fruit and vegetables stay fresher for longer, and cut flowers take longer to drop their petals.
"The way these compounds work is that they don't reduce the production of ethylene, they prevent the fruits, vegetables and flowers from perceiving ethylene," says Dr Payne.
"Every fruit has a receptor that ethylene binds to."
"What we're doing is we're masking those receptors."
Read more at phys.org
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Australian researchers discover ways to make food last longer
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