06/29/06 Knowing When It`s Ripe

Knowing whether it's ripe or not. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. You've seen all sorts of techniques in the produce aisle. Everyone seems to have their own method for determining whether the fruit you buy is ripe. You can't just bite into it and then put it back if it's not. Now all those techniques like pinching, shaking and smelling could all be behind us thanks to an Albuquerque psychologist-cum-inventor. Robert Klein`s two-person company, Redi Ripe, hopes to begin marketing, as early as next year, inexpensive stickers that change color when fruit is ready to eat. Klein has been developing the thumbnail-size stickers with the help of a University of Arizona professor for several years and expects to test prototypes during Washington apple harvests this fall. The project is backed by grants from the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Klein, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, has never taken a college chemistry class and, until recently, his exposure to agriculture was limited to trips to the grocery store. Klein has been doing some casual research on how fruit ripens and that led him to ethylene, which is produced as fruits, vegetables and flowers mature. Ripening, and eventually spoiling, is determined by the plant`s production of ethylene. Through collaboration with Mark Riley, a UA associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, they submitted a proposal to the Washington group, which gave them a grant to develop stickers that change color in reaction to ethylene released through the skin of fruit such as apples and pears. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.