RE: RADSAFE digest 3058

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 10:45 04.04.2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Amen.  In college, I worked a season in a tomato packing house.  The
>tomatoes that go to the stores as "ripe" were the color of a Granny Smith
>apple when they went through the packing line.  Then they were stored in an
>airtight cooler the size of a basketball court until they were about to be
>shipped.  24 hours before shipping, the cooler was flooded with ethylene gas
>(ethylene oxide?). 

It is ethylene, which causes the "ripening" of fruits like bananas and of
tomatoes. Ripe fruits emit this gas, so an old trick is to mix bananas and
green tomatoes in fall, to get the red colour on the tomatoes. It seems
that the slow release of ethylene and low concentration makes the
difference between the natural tomatoes of the neighbours garden and the
artificial red ones from high ethylene concentrations.

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at


Office:
Hofrat Dr. Franz Schoenhofer
Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Resources
Radiation Protection Department
Radetzkystr. 2
A-1031 Vienna
AUSTRIA

phone: -43-1-71172-4458
fax: -43-1-7122331

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