RIPLESS: Natural solution to preserve stone fruits
Advantages
- Natural spray, easy to apply (no specific equipment or machinery needed).
- Can be used in any point of the food-value chain.
- Natural composition without additional flavours.
- Prevents from fruit overripening.
- Prevents from pathogen infection.
- Increases stone fruits shelf-life up to 5 days from its application, it means it doubles its regular life-span.
Goal
The group is looking for a license agreement and/or other type of collaborations with industrial partners.
Intellectual Property
EP22382380
Reference
UBTT0390
Contact
Rosa Vázquez
Email: rvazquez@fbg.ub.edu
Tel: +34 93403 96 39
Isabel Durán
Email: iduran@fbg.ub.edu
Tel: +34 93403 72 81
RIPLESS: Natural solution to preserve stone fruits
Executive summary
A research group, with wide experience on antioxidants, biostimulants and fruit physiology, particularly in regulation of fruit development, has generated a natural solution based on antioxidants which increases fruit shelf-life and preserves stone fruits from pathogen infection.
Introduction
Stone fruits represent a subgroup of sweet fruits that include Prunus species, namely cherries, plums, apricots and peaches. In Spain, sales of stone fruits represented up to 100M€, a third of it only from plums and cherries sales1. However, because of the perishability of stone fruits, up to 25% of total production is dismissed during postharvest due to fruit decay because of firmness and organoleptic losses, and pathogen infection2. The short shelf-life of stone fruits contributes to a high amount of food waste both during the supply chain and at consumers’ homes, which has important social, economical and environmental implications, specially in the frame of climate change3.
Description
RIPLESS is a postharvest solution with a natural composition based on plant antioxidants that expands the shelf-life of stone fruits. It maintains fruit firmness (determined by firmness index) and reduces pathogen incidence (% of infection). Thus, guaranteeing fruit safety.
The form of administration is easy and effective, by pulverizing it on the surface of the fruit (no additional equipment needed).
Compared with other products in the marked, it is a better solution in terms of efficacy and safety. Approaches that nowadays are in the market are among others wax coatings that can produce rejection by consumer due to safety and health-related issues. Other formulas are based
on edible coatings of fatty acid sucroesters, which can expand the shelf-life, but are not specific for stone fruits; and refrigerating systems can
induce physiological disorders on stone fruits, notably reducing their quality.
Current stage of development
At the moment, RIPLESS has been tested at lab scale on plums and cherries, showing a positive effect on increasing up to 5 days the postharvest shelf-life.
Bibliographic references
1Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación (MAPA, 2021). Anuario de Estadística. Publicaciones de la Administración General del Estado, Madrid, Spain.
2Crisosto, C.H., Lurie, S., Retamales, J. (2009). Stone fruits.Modified and Controlled Atmospheres for the Storage, Transportation, and Packaging of Horticultural Commodities. Chapter 13. CRC Press, Florida, USA.
3Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2011). Global Food Losses and Food Waste – Extent, Causes and Prevention. FAO, Rome, Italy.