(Times of Israel) David Shamah - Between a third and a half of all food grown today is lost to spoilage. Thanks to an invention by Israel's Pimi Agro, using hydrogen peroxide "with a few key additions," fruits and vegetables remain fresh and viable for up to 10 weeks, significantly cutting losses due to rot and deterioration during the transportation process, said Nimrod Ben-Yehuda, CTO and co-founder of Pimi. "For places like India, China, and Africa, this is huge, especially because the transportation systems in those areas are slow and refrigeration is hard to come by," he said. Agricultural and food authorities in the U.S., UK, Germany, Australia, China, and many other countries have approved Pimi's all-natural, zero-chemical method of preserving produce. "They're not necessarily organic, but they are much healthier than ordinary produce - besides having a much longer shelf life - because farmers can cut down significantly on the use of fungicides." Pimi Agro's secret: Its products are formulations based on 99.4% Stabilized Hydrogen Peroxide (STHP), which decomposes into oxygen and water, leaving no chemical residue. The trick, said Ben Yehuda, was getting that other 0.6% of the formulation right - and that took him, along with researchers at the Technion and at Hebrew University, 15 years.
2014-10-31 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive