JamesLock

Hello Everyone!

What a great website and forum! I am helping my son with a science project of our own design. The goal of the project is to understand what makes banana fruit go bad and if there are things we can do to make it last longer. We're trying all sorts of things and having lots of fun with it.

One thing we'd like to try is to give the banana some water and some kind of food to see if that would have any effect, but we don't know what kind of "food" would be helpful.

If anyone can give us some ideas on things to try or places to look for information, we'd appreciate it!

Thanks,

Gene & James Loughran

momoese

The only thing I know that will make any difference is to not keep the fruits close to any other ripening fruits as the gas they put off will make the Bananas ripen faster.

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Mitchel

the flying dutchman

I don't understand it james. Do you mean when they are on the plant or
in the basket?

And how can you feed a banana in the basket or water them?

Maybe I am all wrong and is'nt it my day.

ron

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microfarmer

From my limited knowledge, any ripening fruits on the plant/bunch will make the rest ripen faster. Picking ripening fruits will keep the bunch greener longer

Once picked, you can ripen faster by putting with an apple in a bag. The apple gives off the ethylene gas which ripens the banana (or vice/versa if you want to ripen the apple faster).

Good luck!

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My new hero...

JamesLock

Thanks for all the replies!

As odd as it seems, we're trying to keep bananas from rotting once they've been picked. One of our experiments is to cut the stem and place it in water (like a flower). As an adaptation to that experiment, I thought we might put some kind of plant food (like sugar) in the water and see what happened. My thinking is that this might allow the banana to respirate while using the sugar from the water instead of its own.

Thanks again!

Gene & James

PS: I love these icons

the flying dutchman

Hi gene and james,

When I think about this it could work out a bit as it works with
flowers too.

Probably your goal is to pick everyday a banana from the bunch and expect the others not to rotten?

Makes sense to me!

Good luck

ron

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D'Andra

The only thing I can think of is lower temps and keeping them from touching each other. Also, if you get the temp real low you should dip them in chocolate first. Of course this has the opposite reaction to having them last longer in my house, but they won't rot. Let us know if you find out anything.

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D'.

JamesLock

Thanks for the tip! We were going to cover one up with an airtight wrap (balloon), but I'm afraid we will end up bruising it. We'll have to think of a different way to seal it up...maybe chocolate?

Regards,
Gene & James

JamesLock

Hi everyone!

James and I have finished our banana experiment and we found some interesting results. I will be posting them later today and would love to hear your thoughts on our results.

Thanks!

Gene & James Loughran

JamesLock

This is a picture of our final results - after 7 days of testing:

We had the following bananas:

B - darkened box
C - Control (left on the counter)
F - Kept in a glass of sugar/water - cutting the stem daily)
Fr - Fridge
Fz - Freezer
O - Oven (170F for 8 hrs / day)
W - Kept in a glass of water - cutting the stem daily)
Z - Kept in a vacuum - ziploc bag

You can see that the Ziploc banana looks phenomenal. Interestingly, it tasted only as good as the Control banana...we are going to move to a second round of tests.

Before & After pics:

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showg...500&ppuser=673


Please let us know what you think!

Gene & James Loughran

the flying dutchman

That is really interesting, one would not expect that results, the fridge method looked the best for me(cold and dark) but so it is not.

Maybe the fridge and ziploc methods could be combined?????
Also the temeratures in the fridge are not everywhere the same. You should measure that to know more.
Same goes for the freezer and the room temps.

Good luck with the further experiments.

ron

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AnnaJW

Interesting!

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-Anna Banana -

Living my life in MMORPG's

bigdog

Neat experiment! Yep, placing them in the fridge or freezer will make them rot in a hurry. However, here's a way to keep your bananas fresher for longer (than just storing on the counter): Place them in a paper bag, then into the fridge for one hour. After one hour, take them out of the fridge and the bag, and place on the counter. They will last longer!

JamesLock

Thank you all for the replies and suggestions! We are gearing up for round two and we will try both suggestions in the testing.

We will let you know how it goes!

Regards,

Gene & James Loughran

the flying dutchman

Hi gene and james, this is really a terrific experiment.

If you want to do it on a scientific way you have to gather as much
information as possible. I mean about temperatures, the duration and
even the humidity in the house. Even the hours in dark and in light.
Actually you should be able to repeat the experiment under the same
circumstances.

Cheers

Ron

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JamesLock

We did write down and keep track of most of the parameters...but humidity was one we forgot about.

Interestingly, we are puzzling over why the Ziploc banana didn't really taste any different than the control banana...and may have tasted worse.

Our local expert on bananas (my wife and James' mom!), Jan, put a whole bunch of bananas into a ziploc together and vacuum-packed them.

Overnight, the bag inflated with a noxious gas (obviously the Ethylene) and the bananas that we tasted from that bag did not taste good. It's like the Ethylene is seeping back into the bananas.

Looks good; tastes bad!

We are going to research removing the Ethylene gas from the banana's environment....to be continued!

Gene and James

Taylor

That sounds like a very interesting experiment. Good Luck! Science Fair was always very hard for me!


Have Fun too!

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Taylor

Update:
23 California Gold fruit expected by Thanksgiving!
Harvested!