[Banana Facts] How To Ripening Bananas???

Bananas are transported at around 15 degrees Celsius to maintain their “hard green” status en route to the warehouses and ripening facilities.

 Once the bananas have passed the quality assurance process, they then go into a ripening room for conditioning to a customers’ specific colour requirement.

 Banana cartons are stacked on pallets inside the ripening rooms to allow good airflow and consistent temperature within the room.
 Ripening rooms which look more like a cool rooms, create a controlled environment that replicates the climatic conditions (heat and humidity) where the bananas were grown and would have ripened naturally on the plant if not harvested. Heating the air in these rooms (to around 17 degrees Celsius) causes the bananas start to respire.

The combination of warm air and the introduction of ethylene, (the gas bananas and other fruits naturally give off as they ripen) starts the ripening process. As they respire, the pores in their skin open up and the flesh gets softer until they turn towards a yellow colour.

This ripening process continues over the next 6-7 days. The temperature during this period will determine the end colour stage the bananas are ripened to. As bananas ripen, they give off significant quantities of ethylene, a natural ripening agent. You can experiment yourself by placing a banana inside a brown paper bag with a hard avocado. Ethylene from the banana will speed up the ripening process for the avocado.

 The ethylene bananas give off naturally when ripening is the same ethylene that is used in ripening rooms. During the ripening process, the temperature of the pulp is not allowed to rise too high (above 18 degrees Celsius) or too low (below 13 degrees Celsius).

If the pulp temperature gets too high, the bananas become too soft, and if the temperature falls too low, the bananas become chilled and go off in colour. Once the bananas are ripened it’s off to the selling floors of the wholesale markets.
Source;australianbananas.com.au