U.S. company Miatech is rolling out its innovative technology Bio Turbo, which is being used by a Philippines-based banana company to protect the early stage of fruit cultivation by keeping plants bacteria-free. 

Since introducing Bio Turbo technology, Lapanday Foods Corporation has experienced a significant drop in contamination issues in its laboratories where banana cultivation begins.

According to Miatech field manager Dimitrios Loutsaris, using the ethylene busting technology, that also doubles as a bacteria and fungi collector, had led to a reduction in the amount of tissue cultures that are lost as a result of airborne pathogens.

"Lapanday is one of the biggest banana producers in the Philippines and they are very happy and say the solution is viable," Loutsaris tells www.freshfruitportal.com.

"Before, when it was a humid or rainy day they lost up to 20% of the jars, on dry days they lost less. But after they installed our system they are permanently under 10%, so you could easily say this is 50% saving on the previous losses."

Bio Turbo is a patented air purification technology that effectively eliminates ethylene and 99.5% of airborne bacteria. It uses Ozone, but never releases it outside of the system which makes it completely safe.

"Lapanday has a tissue laboratory in the Philippines where they cultivate banana trees which don’t grow by putting a seed in the ground, they are cultivated in a laboratory of course.

"Little pieces of tissue are cut out from a leaf or a stem and then are put in a special liquid jelly and it’s cultivated in small glass jars.

"The problem with this is that any small bacteria or fungus that lands inside the jar will outgrow the plant and eventually kill it. Our system eliminates the airborne pathogens and reduces the losses of the infected jars."

How does it work? The system was initially developed to remove ethylene from cold rooms in addition to airborne pathogens, but Lapanday chief operating officer Carlos Barquero was looking for a solution to deal with the challenge of reducing in-lab airborne pathogens.

"Let’s say you have muld or penicillin that flies around the cold room and some bad fruit like lemons with green mould on them. They can spread around millions of tiny spores and they land on other fruits that are healthy and infect them over time," adds Loutsaris.

"Our system catches these spores and eliminates them. It also breaks ethylene to slow down the ripening process. When others use ozone they often increase the percentage of ozone in the air inside the cold room but that can be difficult; too much can cause problems, while less is not effective.

"We avoid this because we close the power of the ozone inside the box. We put a high concentration of ozone inside the box and have a special catalyst at the end that makes the ozone go back to oxygen."

Since the success of the Lapanday application, Miatech is ready to expand the technology to other fresh produce sectors and lab-based cultivation facilities.

"It’s a solution for all laboratory types. Over time we’ve found out that is works the same for berries and many types of flowers are also cultivated in the same way.

"It doesn’t have to be just bananas. We’ve had interested from a client in Australia working with mushrooms and it’s an identical system to the one they use in the Philippines."

www.freshfruitportal.com