Fruit

Fresh produce suppliers may say there's no pesticide residue on their fruits and veggies, but … are they telling the truth? Store workers could soon be able to check, using an inexpensive stick-on film.

Judging how ripe fruit is can be frustrating for everyone from farmers to shoppers. Now researchers in Japan have developed a new way to check, without touching or damaging soft fruit like mangoes. All it takes is a laser and some plasma shockwaves.

According to Germany's University of Hohenheim, about 80 percent of the fruit trees in that country aren't pruned – despite the fact that doing so makes them more resistant to disease. That's why the university is creating a robot to do the job.

When you think of processes that could benefit from a high-tech makeover, the drying of fruit may not be the first that comes to mind. It turns out, however, that the use of "ionic wind" for fruit-dehydration saves energy and preserves nutrients.

There may be new hope for people prone to allergic reactions of the skin. According to a new study, one serving of black raspberries per day could minimize the effects.

Every year, millions of eggs are rejected for sale in supermarkets, while millions of fruits and vegetables spoil before being eaten. Scientists are now addressing both problems, utilizing rejected eggs to create a coating that keeps produce fresh.

As most fans of the leathery fruit can attest, telling when an avocado is of perfect ripeness can be a guessing game, but a new testing technique could eliminate the margin for error by measuring the firmness of individual specimens using lasers.

According to some studies, people who are overweight or obese are at an increased risk of cognitive decline in old age. There may be hope, however, as a new study suggests that eating an avocado each day may help such folks maintain mental focus.

Researchers at EPFL have now reported a new step towards anti-aging medication. Human clinical trials of a fruit-derived compound showed promise in slowing mitochondrial aging in elderly patients, with no side effects found.

Fieldwork Robotics – a spinout company from the University of Plymouth in the UK – has announced the successful completion of early field trials of a raspberry-harvesting robot. If commercialized, the system could help make up for a shortage of human fruit pickers in the country.

It’s no secret that tomatoes plucked from the supermarket aisles just aren’t that tasty. To find taste genes that could be spliced back into commercial crops, researchers have complied a pan-genome of all cultivated and related wild tomato species, uncovering almost 5,000 previously-unknown genes.

​A team of researchers has been investigating ways to speed up our often long-winded crop domestication process using the latest CRISPR gene-editing technology. A study has outlined how a crop known as a groundcherry could be effectively modified to be better suited to large-scale farming.​