New Label Shows When Fruit Is Ripe

Dekaner writes "New Scientist has an article about a new 'smart' label developed in New Zealand changes color as fruit inside the package with it ripens. The label is designed to stop customers squeezing the fruit to tell if it is ripe enough to eat. The first packages to be tested contain pears, which need to be soft before they are eaten. If the labels prove effective with pears, the research institute in New Zealand will develop versions that work with kiwi fruit, avocados and melons."

Comments

Re:One Small Problem...

[dev0n]

Some do, yes.. others do not. Pears, for example. Or kiwis. Or mangos. Or papaya. Or melons.

Bananas are just about the only fruit I can think of that you can tell accurately tell ripeness based on color. There's probably more than that, but my point is that color is not a good indication of ripeness for most fruits. :)

Re:One Small Problem...

[DerekLyons]

Doesn't the fruit itself change color as it ripens?

Yes, but the processes run in parallel and are asynchronous. (A fruit may reach full color, but not be fully ripe, or it may be fully ripe, but not fully colored.) Commercial fruit growers/packers take advantage of this by exposing the fruit to gases that speed color changes, even when the actual ripening is far from complete. This makes it cheaper for them, as they can pick whole trees at once, rather than fruit-by-fruit, and unripe fruit is less likely to be damaged in transit. However, since very few fruits actually ripen off of the tree, the consumer gets something that looks like a real ripe fruit, but is actually anything but.

Re:that's a good idea

[grondu]

chlorophyll (a simple sugar

Chlorophyll is not a sugar. It is a porphyrin derivative called a chlorin. Here is the structure.