The Science and Technology of ... Bananas?

True to our ape roots, the Geeklings and I are big fans of bananas. It's hard to beat a curved yellow fruit at the peak of ripeness: all green-ness gone and no brown spots showing yet. As it turns out, there is a surprising amount of engineering and logistical planning required to get a banana into our paws -- er, hands -- at that moment of perfection.

How much engineering and planning, you ask? Well, over at Edible Geography, Nicola Twilley provides the answer in her behind-the-scenes look at a modern banana ripening facility in New York.

Bananas are cut while green, hard, and immature, washed in cool water (both to begin removing field heat and to stop them from leaking their natural latex), and then held at 56 degrees -- originally in a refrigerated steamship; today, in a refrigerated container -- until they reach their country of consumption weeks later.

What this means is that ripening must then be artificially induced, in a specialized architecture of pressurized, temperature- and atmosphere-controlled rooms that fool the banana into "thinking" it is still back on the plant in tropical Ecuador.

Nicola takes us on a tour of Banana Distributors of New York and their banana ripening facilities. As well, she throws in a short lesson on the history of the banana industry, the bio-chemistry of fruit ripening, and the ongoing evolution of the technology involved.

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Head over to Edible Geography for the full story.