APPLES THAT BREATHE

Evening Star, Issue 19003, 27 July 1925, Page 2

APPLES THAT BREATHE

A now instrument to detect poison gas in tlio storage chambers of ships has just been made by research, scientists at Cambridge University and despatched to Australia for trial on fruit boats coming Homo. This experiment is a further development in the elaborate research directed towards tho eradication of the diseaso known as “ brown heart.” Apples, like men, breathe, said Mr F. F. Pearce, the fruit expert of the Overseas Farmers’ Co-operative Federation, in London. They take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. If there is insufficient ventilation in the storage rooms they get suffocated and die of brown heart. Since scientists made this discovery there Inis been a revolution in shipping vent nation, and though a quarter of a million pounds was lost through brown _ heart only three years ago, this year it is regarded almost'as a curiosity.

Tho now instrument, which records tho atmosphere of storage chambers by a chemical process, will , make the delicate work_ ot adjusting the ventilation a very much simpler matter.