Every fall, apple growers gather billions of apples, rush them into storage, seal the airtight doors and wait until harvest is a distant memory to reopen them. But every spring and summer, there are bad surprises when they slide open their massive warehouse doors only to discover that temperamental Honeycrisps have turned to mush.

And that’s where Strella’s sensors come in. They monitor ethylene, a gas key to the ripening of fruits and vegetables. Apples accelerate their production of ethylene as they grow sweeter inside the storerooms. Once they’re ready, the gas levels off, telling Strella’s monitors that they’re ready to be sent to supermarkets.

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Not everyone thinks ethylene sensors are the best solution to avoiding wasted apples. Ethylene has a long history of failed technology with big promises but failed potential.

“There’s three different factors to control the loss or waste or decay, and it’s temperature, temperature, temperature,” said Irwin Donis-Gonzalez, an expert on post-harvest technology at the University of California at Davis. He said drawing a straight line between ethylene measurements and fruit ripeness isn’t easy.

Still, food waste experts say, anything that can help food get all the way to people’s stomachs is for the better.

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