Nowadays, people want the cleanest, healthiest, most natural substances around themselves. Media focuses on recyclable goods and companies advertise themselves with pride on helping the environment. Parents don’t want to expose their children to chemicals, this can be seen through the cleaning supplies they buy, and even the fruits and vegetables they purchase. Organic produce is the new trend in all grocery stores. Realizing this growing field researchers in Germany have come up with an extremely effective method of aiding organic produce.

The E-ventus technology, created by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP in Dresden, provides an alternative method of fungicide treatment for the organic produce industry. Their method involves bombarding seeds with electrons, the electrons break the chemical bonds between molecules of fungi and pathogens thus destroying them. The treatment needs to be monitored extremely closely to ensure that the electrons do not permeate the seed coat and harm the seed itself. This process currently treats 30 metric tons of seeds every hour. E-ventus has the potential of being the most cost effective way of growing organic produce, however these findings have not been published in a peer reviewed journal. As such, the effectiveness of this method is yet to be seen. Interestingly, another research group from Lithuania has published a similar finding using ozone as a fungicide in Ekologija (2006) 3: 88.

Article links:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081010092332.htm, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/f-uet101008.php

Press release from E-ventus: http://www.fraunhofer.de/EN/press/pi/2008/10/ResearchNews102008Topic3.jsp

Discussion question: Is this technology a viable alternative to genetically modified vegetables and fruits?