Jenny Du

Designer pesticides aren't great for our long-term health or the environment.

Waxes, some can be plant-based, but a lot of them are also animal-derived or petroleum-derived, and they help make produce look better, but not really meaningfully extend their life and quality.

And packaging, that's just adding to our problems with single-use plastics and microplastics.

And then all of this leads to a pretty narrow set of fruits and vegetables that are available in stores today relative to the amazing diversity of what's really out there.

And so it's really like the categories that can survive storage and transportation that are commonly available.

And those aren't always the ones that taste best or have the highest density of nutrients.

So my friends wanted to approach this differently.

And we led first with some questions.

How do plants protect themselves?

Well, with a peel.

Plants, just like us, have a skin or peel, technically called the plant cuticle, and that helps to protect them from moisture loss, oxidation and infection.

And what are those peels made of?

Fatty acids, glycerides.

That's what's the important part.

And these are ingredients found universally in all plants, in the peel, pulp and seeds, and including in plants that we already eat.

Different fruits have different shelf lives because of the thickness and arrangement of these materials in those peels.

So the idea then is, can we take these harmless, edible, plant-based ingredients, apply them in a thin layer on the surface of fresh fruits and vegetables to help reinforce the existing natural peel,

And if you do that, can you help to retain peak flavor, texture and nutrients for longer without reliance on refrigeration, pesticides, waxes or plastics?

And so that's what James Liu and I, that's why we founded Appeal Sciences and ultimately headed to James's garage to try and figure out.

We started first by partnering with a small local grower, and we tested the idea on this category you may not have heard of called finger limes.