APPLE GIRL
She's only two years out of college, but her high-tech
sensors — which monitor ethylene, a gas key to the ripening of fruits and vegetables — are keeping watch over 15 percent of U.S. apples.
Katherine Sizov crouched down and gently placed one of her sensors in a corner of a cavernous warehouse room that was packed to the ceiling with crates of apples.
Forklifts carrying crates sped through the passageway outside. Trucks rumbled up to the warehouse, piled high with Ambrosias, Cosmic Crisps, Enterprises and all the bounty of Washington state’s densely planted orchards. A powerful fragrance hung in the air, mixing with the chill of the refrigerated rooms.
For the next eight months, the device she built — about half the size of a shoe box — was going to keep watch over the 5 million pieces of fruit jammed into that single room, making sure they didn’t overripen during their long stay in suspended animation.
As a junior in college, Sizov started a company, Strella Biotechnology, to try to reduce waste in the U.S. food system — a problem that by some estimates creates as much emissions as 33 million passenger vehicles.
Now, three years later, Sizov had talked her way into the warehouses of most of the country’s biggest apple producers, and her devices monitor about 15 percent of the entire U.S. crop...
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