FLICKR, AARON FULKERSON
Not sure if that avocado needs one more day to ripen? A new device, developed by chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, can accurately measure the ripeness of several types of fruit by detecting the presence of ethylene, a gas that promotes ripening in plants. The sensor could help supermarkets avoid the roughly 10 percent of their fruits and vegetables they lose every year to spoilage, said MIT’s Timothy Swager.
The sensor, described April 19 in the journal Angewandte Chemie, is made of an array of tens of thousands of carbon nanotubes modified with copper atoms, which bind ethylene and allow scientists to measure the amount of gas present. The researchers successfully tested their sensors on bananas, avocados, apples, pears, and oranges, accurately determining ...
