Fruit in the news

We like to provide our readers with cutting edge fruit news, especially when stickers or fruit tattoos are involved. I dare you to find a blog that posts more on fruit stickers than we do.

Here's the latest urgent news that should help you make more intelligent decisions not only as upstanding citizens but also as fruit shoppers:

A University of Arizona professor has invented a sticker that can tell consumers if a fruit or vegetable is ripe. The stickers will be available to growers next year and should make their way to supermarkets within two to three years, said Mark Riley, a UA assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering...

"Right now, picking fruit is more of an art than it is a science," Riley said.

A marker on Riley's RediRipe stickers detects a chemical called ethylene gas, which is released by fruit or vegetables as they ripen.

As that happens, the sticker turns from white to blue...

And there are still bugs to be worked out: The stickers do not change color to reflect an overripe or rotten piece of fruit. Also, not all fruit produces enough ethylene to be detected by the sticker, said Jim McFerson, manager of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, a growers' research group that helped sponsor the research.

"There is still a lot of research to do," McFerson said.