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Details Of Innovation
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Ka Boning Dizon, a farmer from Pakil Laguna, Philippines, has invented a method for storing green tomatoes. He accidentally kept some green tomatoes in a sack of charcoal and forgot all about them. Three months later, while cleaning the kitchen, he found the tomatoes red, ripened and still fresh. This inspired him to experiment. In the bottom of a basket he put a layer of charcoal and over it he placed a layer of tomato. Over the tomato layer he put another layer of charcoal and followed by layer of tomato and so on. He piled up alternate layers of charcoal and tomatoes till the basket was full. At the top he placed a thick layer of charcoal and kept the basket for six months undisturbed. After six months, when he opened the basket, tomatoes were fully ripe but still fit to eat. (In Bangladesh, we had learned about another practice for the same purpose in 1986. The farmers hung the bunches or plants with unripe tomatoes in a shady windy place upside down. The tomatoes could be kept fresh for upto three months. An experiment that can be done by anyone is to put two or three tomatoes straight and equal number upside down on a table. Watch the ripening process. The compound responsible for ripening is supposed to move slowly when tomatoes are inverted. Durga Prasad Singh in his book on storing potatoes in North India in 1915, had referred to the use of coal bed for seed storage in Frankfurt, Germany that he had heard about :Ed) Source: Cristina B Lorenzo (1994),‘‘ Tomatoes in Charcoal’’, Organic Farming No.17 p:46
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