Whether the apples you eat come from ten kilometres away or a thousand, they most likely followed similar paths to get into your hands, from harvest, storage, or transport. Despite improvements in food storage and transport, up to 40% of all picked fruits are wasted, in part due to their perishable nature. In communities where fruit harvesting makes up a sizeable portion of people’s livelihoods, these losses can have significant impact on the availability of quality fruits, and the wider local economy.

Karthika Sriskantharajah is an Arrell Scholar Alumna whose research focused on providing farmers and consumers with higher quality fruits that last longer. As a PhD student in the Department of Plant Agriculture, Karthika’s research addressed the problem of harvest loss of soft fruits through the application of hexanal, a natural compound that has an anti-aging effect on fruits.

Karthika’s research first tested this compound on honey-crisp apple varieties, applying hexanal to slow down the aging process. Hexanal application can reduce fruit loss at two stages, both on the field and post-harvest. Picture walking through an orchard in late November and seeing the ground below each tree littered with apples that fell before they could be picked. When hexanal is applied before fruit maturity, these ground losses are reduced by 20%, leaving more fruit available to actually harvest. After harvest, the shelf life of a hexanal-treated apple can be extended to as much as four months. Because of the slower aging process, these apples are less likely to spoil or to develop deformities during storage, further reducing loss by 30-50%.

Building on the success of the research on honey-crisp apple varieties, next steps for the research include testing hexanal as a pre-harvest spray on other soft fruits, such as peaches, nectarines, and other apple varieties, in collaboration with external partners.

Karthika’s research on reducing post-harvest fruit loss is connected to an interest in improving the livelihoods of communities, including producers who depend on fruit production for their livelihoods and those experiencing food insecurity. After completing her research in 2021, Karthika is now working as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Vineland Campus of the University of Guelph. Her experience working with fruit crops has informed her work on current projects.