Reduction of CO2 to ethylene for regulating the ripeness of climacteric fruits.

Food safety is closely related to human survival and quality of life. As an important part of human table food, climacteric fruits need to be ripened after picking in order to achieve the best eating quality. Traditional fruit ripeness control techniques have issues of time-consuming, food safety, and environmental pollution. In this paper, we prepared a composite electrocatalytic electrode material (A-Cu2O-PFP) with a simple and mild method and developed a carbon dioxide (CO2) electroreduction technology based on a highly selective Cu₂O catalyst, which can convert CO2 into ethylene to precisely regulate the ripening process of fruits. This strategy avoids environmental pollution and ripening agent residues, so as to effectively solve the food safety problems of fruit ripeness in cross-border and cross-seasonal supply chains. It provides a new solution for food quality and safety control technology, and also opens up a new application field for carbon dioxide reduction technology.