Why does some fruit last longer – solving our food riddles

Sunny George Gwanpua is a man on a mission – one that has taken him around the world.

It’s a journey that is benefiting New Zealand’s food industry and may eventually help to develop one in his own country, Cameroon.

It’s a journey kicked off by tumult.

“Initially I was more inclined into the medical sciences, that’s what I wanted to do,” Sunny says. “I became more interested in food because of food crises in the developing countries.

“In my country, we are one of the key exporters of raw materials like cocoa and coffee, but at the end of the day they need to import processed food like chocolate – it doesn’t make sense. So I thought maybe it’s a time that people start to get involved in understanding how to process food material and preservation, because we can have things like post-harvest loss of about 50 per cent in my country.”

Sunny had a dream and the desire to see it realised. But he also had smarts.

After completing a Bachelor of Biochemistry at the University of Buea in Cameroon he was one of just two from his country to be offered a Belgium government scholarship at KU University Leuven to do a Masters in Food Technology.

At just 23 he left home and his young wife Angeline for a new continent and the next stage of his educational journey.

“It was different but I was fine, I was happy with it,” he says. “It was a major change, particularly the climate because I got there in the winter. But there were things I admired; I saw a culture of hard work, where you get up at 7am for school and everyone is busy, and people are going to work and trying to catch buses.”

Sunny was busy too. Angeline joined him eight months later, by which time he was well on the way to earning a Masters in Bio-Science Engineering. Then came a PhD, with his research including quality prediction in apples, a pointer to a possible future.

He was considering that future as he attended conferences abroad and bumped into a couple of researchers from Massey University, Andrew East and Julian Heyes.

He had been in Belgium a number of years and now had a daughter, Daniella, to think about as well.

“I knew Andrew worked with industry, which I really, really wanted to do because, remember, my original plan was to help fight this particular food crisis problem in Cameroon, so I didn’t want to just stop in a lab doing some kind of fundamental research.

“I like to see the science being used to solve particular problems.”

It would be another two years before the right project surfaced. Sunny applied for a role with Massey and before long was moving once more, this time with his family, to a new beginning in a very different country.

“This country, the first thing I noticed was they are incredibly friendly. Belgians are a little bit reserved. ”

His recollections are still fresh because he’s been in New Zealand barely three months.

“My first experience at the airport, I saw a couple of young lads with blue T-shirts who were there to help and they just took everything, big luggage. And when I came to Palmerston North my colleagues came to the airport and tried everything to make me feel settled. It was a little bit strange to me, but of course lovely.”

New Zealand has been exporting kiwifruit for decades but still has much to learn about why some fruit can go soft quicker than others.Sunny travelled halfway around the world to study New Zealand’s kiwifruit. He’s part of a three-year Massey University project working to make one of the country’s top export products even more profitable.

The work is funded by the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain Primary Growth Partnership programme, a seven-year, $170 million innovation programme involving the Ministry for Primary Industries and commercial partners, including Zespri, DairyNZ and Fonterra.

The programme aims to enable the creation of new dairy products, increase on-farm productivity, reduce environmental impacts, and improve agricultural education. It is also involved in research to grow markets for kiwifruit and improve the returns of the industry, which is performing strongly overseas.

New Zealand has been exporting kiwifruit for decades but still has much to learn about why some fruit can go soft quicker than others, even if they’ve shared the same coolstore.

“That can mean you can’t sell it, you can’t ship it, you can’t handle it, so it’s something Zespri really wants to avoid.”

Cameroon imports processed food like chocolate, despite being a major exporter of cocoa.

Sunny’s team-mates study the fruit’s bio-chemistry, its quality; some of them use image analysis. And then he takes the data produced, consolidates their research and prepares mathematical models.

“It’s about trying to understand how this [softening] happens and translate it into basic equations that can help you predict what will happen after some time.”

His PGP-funded research is valuable work that could save millions of dollars in lost product and create new opportunities for the iconic New Zealand product.

“If you can predict what happens with the fruit then you can go into certain markets that you didn’t go into before because the conditions were considered too harsh. And when you open the cool room and you notice that some fruit has gone soft then that costs the industry. So if we have this model then we will be able to predict them and take action.”

Which is far from his mind when he relaxes at the end of the day with his wife, daughter, who is now 6 and goes to West End School in Palmerston North, and son David, who turns 2 in June.

“I try to read outside science – read Christian books, also biographies. And I like watching football a lot – what you call soccer. I do play also. I’m looking to join a club.”

He laughs at the suggestion he might pursue a professional career. “It’s just going to be for fun and fitness.”

Sunny has a bigger dream to chase. He wants to head home one day, to Cameroon, to help build a sustainable food processing industry.

“I do miss Cameroon, basically I miss the family. However, having my wife and kids with me helps me feel at home.”

In the meantime he’s working hard on another profitable future – that of the New Zealand kiwifruit.