PUT TO SLEEP

Evening Star, Issue 21080, 18 April 1932, Page 6

PUT TO SLEEP

EXPERIMENTS ON FRUIT LONDON, April 2. “ Putting apples to sleep for ten years, and then allowing them to wake as fresh as the day they were picked.” That, briefly, is the hoped-for result of experiments carried out by the Industrial Research Department of East Mailing (Kent), where a demonstration has just been concluded. Various fruits were put to sleep for a year by an anaesthetic in the form of carbondioxide emanating from the fruits themselves. The method, it is said, might be applied to Australian fruits aboard ship, though the fruit must be locally adapted to the conditions existing prior to the shipment. Dr Kidd, a West Cambridge scientist, experimented on fruit for ten years. Apples thus treated were in perfect condition, while apples merely coldstored proved to be defective. Dr Kidd thinks that much wastage in imported Australian apples can be prevented by the process, which reinforces and does not replace cold storage, It saves English orchardists £5 a ton on their fruit, and experiments are now beginning in a model ship’s hold at East Mailing.