Avocados that stay ripe for twice as long as usual thanks to an edible barrier made from plant materials will be sold in the US for the first time this week.
The tasteless coating, developed by Santa Barbara company Apeel Sciences, controls the two main factors that cause fresh produce to go bad: the rate at which water escapes the surface of fruit and vegetables and the rate at which oxygen enters. This allows treated produce to stay fresh for longer.
“We’re creating an optimised microclimate that can double the shelf life [of the fruit],” said James Rogers, CEO of Apeel Sciences. “The average avocado might be ripe for 2-3 days. Ours will stay ripe for 4-6 days.”
Apeel hopes its technology can also reduce the amount of fruit and vegetables that are thrown out by retailers and consumers because of spoilage. Americans throw away on average 400lb of food per person, costing a household of four about $1,800 per year.
Although Apeel is starting with avocados, the coating’s formulation can be modified to create optimal conditions for other items including strawberries, mangoes, apples, bananas, kumquats and asparagus.
Avocados were a priority because of their notoriously fleeting window of perfect ripeness and relatively high price.
“Everyone has an experience of cutting into an avocado and discovering it’s past its prime,” said Rogers. “It’s a visceral reaction when you’ve spent a few dollars on something that ends up in the garbage.”
From this week, the Apeel-treated avocados – grown by California-based Del Rey Avocado – will be available in Costco and Harp Foods stores across the midwest, before rolling out across the United States.
Rogers says that in California, where a lot of fruit and vegetables are produced, it’s easier to find good quality items in the supermarket.
“When you go anywhere besides California, the quality of fresh produce suffers,” he said, noting that the quality degrades the longer it takes to transport the produce. “We slow down the rate at which the clock is ticking.”
Apeel’s coating is made from naturally occurring lipids extracted from discarded fruit or vegetable waste, including tomatoes, grapes, wasted seeds. These lipids are turned into a powder that can be reconstituted with water to create a dip or a spray.
“Nature has been solving these problems for millions of years,” said Rogers. “We look at how nature has been protecting itself for years and copy those solutions.
The coating can also extend the life of produce in developing countries where refrigeration is not widely available across the supply chain, which explains why the company launched in 2012 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company has carried out pilots in Nigeria and Kenya, treating cassava root and mangoes.
“Our technology allows smaller farmers to get their produce from where it’s grown on their farm to city centres where they can earn the economic value associated with what they are producing,” said Rogers.
Apeel isn’t the first company to tackle the scourge of the mushy avocado. In 2016 an Australian firm launched what it described as an “avocado time machine”, which slowed the browning process of the fruit by “switching off” the enzyme responsible for the browning using pressure fluctuations generated by steam.
California-based avocado distributor Calavo uses a contraption called ProRipe VIP that measures how ripe the fruits is by “listening” to it. The machine taps the side of the avocado and then uses sensors to measure the acoustic response – that is, the way the fruit vibrates. This indicates overall firmness and freshness and allows Calavo to determine the ripeness of the tricky-to-judge flesh.
