A new idea for how anti-aging products delay ripening of fruit and wilting of flowers

Novel chemical pathway could help design of new anti-aging chemicals for plant products, says UCR’s Michael Pirrung

Michael Pirrung is a professor of chemistry and the holder of the University of California Presidential Chair in Chemistry at UC Riverside. Click here for more information.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – When plants encounter ethylene, a gas they also produce naturally as a hormone, the result is softening and ripening in the case of fruit, and wilting and fading in the case of flowers – all of which ethylene promotes.

To delay these effects, growers spray plants with products available in the market today, such as EthylBloc^TM for flowers and SmartFresh^SM for fruits and vegetables, that contain a compound that blocks ethylene’s action on plants.

But how this compound, 1-methylcyclopropane or 1-MCP, works at the molecular level remains uncertain despite several chemical pathways chemists have proposed in the scientific literature.

Now, in a research paper published in the April issue of Chemistry & Biology, a team led by Michael Pirrung, a professor of chemistry and the holder of the University of California Presidential Chair in Chemistry at UC Riverside, offers a novel pathway for how “anti-aging” products like EthylBloc and SmartFresh block ethylene in plants, delaying the plants’ demise and allowing people to enjoy their beauty and products for longer than nature allows.