The Office of Commercialization has awarded 10 Washington State University researchers with the Commercialization Gap Fund (CGF).

Amit Dhingra received an award for  “Field Evaluation of Fruit Quality with Glycine Betaine:” The patented innovation is the novel use of glycine betaine, a natural certified organic plant metabolite, as a pre-harvest or at harvest technology to delay the development of pear fruit. To enable commercial-scale application, there is a need for farm-scale replicated trials. Funding will enable the collection of generation farm-level data and market adoption.

Read more about the 2021 Commercialization Gap Fund projects here.

A genetic discovery leads to a new compound that could kick-start pear ripening and shows potential in sliced pears.

For more than a decade, Washington State University geneticist Amit Dhingra has been trying to figure out the underlying genetics of pear ripening in order to design postharvest products that could deliver consistent fruit quality.

A series of research projects that began with trying to understand the seemingly unpredictable impacts of 1-MCP (1-methylcyclopropene, which blocks ethylene receptors) on pears and find postharvest products that would deliver consistent fruit quality are now starting to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle, Dhingra said, with new tools to spur ripening and a genetic understanding of how and why they work.

Read the full story by Kate Prengaman here.