Volatile Organic Compound Detection Using Graphene

Grocery stores offer a wide selection of fruits and vegetables that are available year-round. By the time these fruits and vegetables reach someone's home, the harvest process was done days and even weeks ago. Most of the fruits and vegetables are not in season and come from other parts of the world. These fruits and vegetables contain chemicals to help with their preservation. Even if a label reads a piece of zucchini

During my high school years, I recall working in the fields during vacation breaks with my mother harvesting tomatoes, picking up cherries, and pruning grape vines. Fascinating as it sounds, I was always intrigued to understand why fruits and vegetables spoil or often cause food poising in humans. Although, when I questioned my mother why these fruits spoil, she responded it was due to “little bugs,” which was not a sufficient response.

Farmers have to consider the food quality checks. Farmers are aware of that if fruits or vegetables are not in a perfect shape supermarkets are not going to buy them, so farmers just throw away imperfect fruits and vegetables. Royte who is a nature writer, in her article “Eat Ugly!” she explained, “A lot of food sellers think no one will buy freaky-looking food. So they toss it before trying to sell it. Each year, 1.3 billion metric tons of food gets wasted in this way” (Royte). According to Richard Schiffman gave a solution for this problem in his article “What a Waste!” by giving the example of “Andronico's Community Markets in California” who sell imperfect looking fruits and vegetables to a very low price (Schiffman). This will help Famers and they don’t need to throw away the ugly looking products. The other reason food being wasted in fields by farmers is that they have to make sure that they have a steady supply of products for supermarkets (Matt and Peek). They purposed a solution for this problem, “With better food labeling—for example, using a spoils-on date rather than a sell-by date markets could keep their stock longer and ease demand on farmers” (Matt and Peek). The government should bring stricter policies to decrease food waste in fields and supermarkets can play an important role to reduce food waste

During distribution fruits and vegetables face a lot of safety issues from harvest, to washing, and to shipping. Not all

Everything must be inspected to guarantee safety and freshness of a food product before it reaches consumers. The program responsible for shipping point inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables is the Association of Fruit and Vegetable Inspection and Standardization Agencies (AFVISA) founded in 1986; which is a voluntary organization comprised of state inspection programs (5). The AFVISA was formed to unite the states, agencies, and federal government in order to exchange information about commerce to create laws and regulations that agree with each other (5). Although, on January 4, 2011 president Obama signed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act into law, which established mandatory minimum standards for growing, harvesting, sorting, and packaging of fruits and vegetables (6). This new law requires manufactures to follow strict regulations that better guarantees that fruits and vegetables will be safer and healthier to eat. There are many stages and people in food production that need to be educated on the standards of safe food handling to lower likely hood of microbial contamination. The problem is associated with the middle men like packers, processers and grocers that may not have good hygiene or bad water quality (6).All food handlers must practice food safety in order to maintain healthful fruits and vegetables to consumers. The FDA is reaching out

The CO2 extraction method proved to be useful and efficient, as well as environmentally safe. The D-Limonene that was extracted could be tested for optical rotation, and then refractive index. The results were very close to the prescribed literature values, leading to the conclusion that the procedure was very adequate in extracting the desired compound. The CO2 extraction technique is not only limited to this lab, as it can be used for numerous other reasons, including the decaffeination of coffee, allowing people to drink the delicious drink without having to commit to the hyperactive side effects of the caffeine it naturally

This is important when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables which start to lose nutritional value the same moment they are harvested.

Ripen Faster- Everyone knows it can be a pain to wait for fruit you just bought to come to a fully ripened stage if you have a craving. To ripen fruits faster place your produce in a paper bag. Oxygen will still be allowed in and the gas that is released over time to ripen the fruit will be concentrated, making it a faster process.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are at high risk of contamination and deterioration without the right packaging. Not only can they suffer infestation from insects, but they also can begin to rot far before you can prepare and serve them with your meals. The packaging industry has gone through many changes over the years and now provides such safe, durable options such as the PP sacks or polypropylene sacks for fresh produce that our company offers to you. Your reap the following benefits when your turn to these bags to protect your fresh produce.

Fruits and vegetables may contain amounts of electricity. They contain large amounts of water, the water in them make them good producers of electricity. The more citric and ascorbic acid in the fruit and vegetable creates more conductivity leading to more voltage. A related experiment to mine is powering a lightbulb with a fruit or vegetable. Many people have tried powering a light bulb with different fruits and vegetables, but will they power an electronic device? Most people who have tried powering a small light bulb have succeed. The two different metals, copper and zinc, will probably help transfer the electricity to the device or light bulb. Powering/charging an electronic will probably need more electricity than just a light bulb.

Another method of visualisation is placing the plate into iodine vapours for a few minutes. Almost all of the organic compounds will produce a dark-coloured complex with the iodine.

Banana is unique in that it releases a large amount of ethylene. If banana is paired with other fruits still unripe it will help other fruit mature quicker. To prove this theory I conducted

Some fruits and vegetables such as oranges or peppers have thick cell walls that keep the fruit fresh for days or even weeks. Over a period of time these cell walls begin to decompose. You usually notice your fruit has gone bad by the color,taste,or smell. The changes in these fruits can be caused by air,

Namdhari’s Fresh has its own farms producing fruits and vegetables under diverse agro-climatic conditions from North to South India. They also have contract farming arrangement with over 2000 farmers at different places. The production under different agro-climatic conditions and strong network with farmers enable them to produce the fruits and vegetables round the year. They grow more than 50 different varieties of fruits and vegetables in different production centres across the country. Importance is given at all levels to maintain the quality of the produce.

Cold storages form the most important element for proper storage and distribution of wide variety of perishables, especially fruits and vegetables. According to a rough estimate 25% of fruits and vegetables worth crores of rupees are spoiled every year for want of adequate post harvest technologies including cold storages. It is therefore necessary that cold storages are to be constructed in major producing as well as consuming centers.