Vegetables without expiration dates
Tesco, a UK supermarket chain, has announced a decision to remove expiration dates from 116 fruit and vegetable products (including apples, oranges, cabbage and asparagus) to reduce food waste. Since the beginning of this year, in supermarkets, the network has already done this with about 70 names of fruits and vegetables.
The company conducted a survey among buyers, and more than half of the two thousand participants agreed that the lack of expiration dates on the packaging will allow them to keep and use products that have not lost their consumer qualities for a longer time. “Deciding not to print expiration dates on certain product labels is our way of helping consumers reduce food waste and save money,” said Mark Little, head of food waste management at Tesco. “It’s just wrong that quality food is thrown away, and we will do our best to change that.”
At the end of October 2018, Tesco CEO Dave Lewis called for transparency and traceability of food waste information throughout the supply chain, after which the twenty-seven largest Tesco suppliers for the first time in history published their own data on this issue /
The company has set a goal so that not a single product that is safe and suitable for consumption is discarded either in stores or in the distribution centers of the Tesco network in the UK, and has already passed 70% along the path planned in this direction.
Based on FruitNews
Storage after exposure
Since 2020, in Russia, for the processing of food products (primarily meat, potatoes and grains), it is possible that ionizing radiation will be used. According to the Izvestia newspaper, the Rusatom Helskea company, which is part of the structure of the Rosatom state corporation, intends to complete the development of the corresponding technology by the end of 2019.
Processing will be used to disinfect products after harvest and increase their shelf life without additional preservation. Ionizing radiation will inhibit the development and reproduction of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, molds), as well as pests.
Other problems will be solved with the help of radiation exposure: it can prevent the germination of root crops during long-term storage, as well as slow down the ripening of fresh fruits and vegetables before commercial sale.
Despite all the pluses, experts so far assess the prospects for launching technology in our country in different ways.
As the deputy chairman of the board of the Rusprodsoyuz association Dmitry Leonov noted, “the introduction of such technologies must be approached very carefully: today, scientists do not have a single opinion about their harm or safety to humans.”
Rashid Alimov, coordinator of the energy program of the Greenpeace office in Russia, agreed with his opinion: “The consequences of food irradiation have not been fully studied: there is evidence that it changes them at the cellular level.” In addition, according to Alimov, with such processing there is no guarantee that all microbes will be destroyed even at high doses of radiation, and the product may disappear or have a specific smell. Damage or destruction of vitamins (E and B1) and proteins can also occur.
On the other hand, according to Victor Tutelyan, research director of the FIC Food and Biotechnology, the use of food processing technology by ionizing radiation is strictly regulated in the world, which should make it safe for humans. The expert stressed that in the world processing was specially created in order to extend the shelf life of food products.
According to the newspaper Izvestia
Freeze Hogweed
Scientists at the Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Syktyvkar) are conducting an experiment to develop an environmentally friendly method for the elimination of Sosnowski hogweed. In a small control plot of the growth of hogweed biologists have achieved the complete extinction of the weed plant.
The method of controlling hogweed is based on determining the degree of resistance of the weed to cold temperatures.
Now scientists intend to find out the temperature of the soil in which hogweed grows in the winter season. To do this, experts lay temperature sensors in the fields.
According to experts, underground buds and weed seeds die at a temperature of -12 ° C, but in winter the plant is reliably protected by snow cover. If the calculations of the biologists are correct, it will be enough to remove snow from the territories where the weed is common in frosty weather. In the future, this method can be distributed throughout the country.
Based on materials from KVEDOMOSTI.RU
Shock the weeds
European countries are also actively looking for ways to control weeds without the use of herbicides. A possible solution could be the development of the British company RootWave, which won the prestigious Judges' Choice Award at FoodBytes in London in 2018.
RootWave specialists created a cultivator that, in the process of moving across the field through a special electrode, delivers electric charges into the soil that kill weeds. Such a plant is able to deal with any weeds with a height of 5 cm.
The company received a grant for the development of a fully autonomous agricultural solution in the amount of 1,3 million euros. At the moment, the project attracts investors and partners among manufacturers of agricultural machinery. New cultivators are expected to go on sale in 2020.
Based on FruitNews
"Plastic" from potatoes
A student at Lund University (Sweden) Pontus Turnkvist created a material resembling plastic, but having an important advantage: the novelty decomposes into elements that are safe for nature in less than two months.
The new material is called Potato Plastic, as its main components are potato starch and water. The manufacturing technology is simple: water and starch are heated to a thick mixture, then placed in special molds and heated again until the material becomes solid. Thus, from it you can create things of any shape and color, for example, disposable cutlery.
The project for the production of "potato plastic" reached the final of the international competition in industrial design and engineering design The James Dyson Award, and its author received 22 thousand Swedish kronor to implement the idea.
Based on materials from the Rossiyskaya Gazeta