Banana and tomato in the same jar?

[Rilchiam]

I seem to remember, as a child, looking at Children’s Digest and seeing one of those kid-experiment things that involved putting a banana and a tomato in the same jar. They were either supposed to help each other ripen, or make napalm, I dunno. Today at Albertson’s, I bought a banana and a peach.

Cashier: You gonna put these in a jar together?

Me: That’s a tomato. You’re supposed to put a banana and a tomato in a jar together.

Cashier: I heard it was a peach, or, no, an orange.

Me: Well, a tomato is supposedly a fruit, whatever. But what’s it do?

Cashier: I forget.

Sorry, that was more MPSIMS than GQ. But apparently, I’m not the only person who’s vaguely heard of this thing. So, is there any merit in hermetically sealing bananas with tomatoes?

[LolaBaby]

I found this good site to read:
http://www.kes-pro.com/bio_kes/ethylene_info1.htm

Ethylene is one of the hormones that naturally brings about this last phase of a plant’s life. When fruits, vegetables and flowers are stored in enclosed areas, and the ethylene levels build up, plants senesce, or age, at an unusually fast pace.

Ripening is the phase of a plant just before senescence. It is the time period in which the fruit of the plant changes color and develops the flavor, texture and aroma that make it best suitable for consumption. The effects of ethylene on ripening must be given particular attention. On one hand, ripening is important to the sale of produce. Consumers want to purchase food they can eat and not have to wait for it to ripen. But on the other hand, once the ripening process begins it cannot be reversed or stopped, only slowed…

In a natural setting, when a plant is growing in the earth, the ripening process is triggered when the internal ethylene concentration of a plant’s fruit is 0.1-1 ppm. However, plants can’t distinguish between internal and external sources. Any external ethylene gas that the produce is exposed to will speed up the ripening. To keep produce from ripening too quickly, as much ethylene as possible should be removed from the surrounding air.

[LolaBaby]

Damn, too fast again.
Anyway, my WAG is it’s any plant.

I didn’t pay too much attention in Botany lecture so you might want to wait for someone who didn’t fall asleep in class.

[Rilchiam]

I see! Thank you.

[cantara]

Another version of this I had heard was to put an apple in with a basket of peaches. Apparently the ethelene(?) given off by the apple causes the peaches to ripen more slowly.

We tried it last year, and it seemed to work (although we weren’t performing an experiment and had no control groups or consistent monitoring…YMMV). The peaches started drying out long before they became overripe.