A team of researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and ...

The use of needles to put melatonin into plants helps them stay fresh longer and slows yellowing. This could keep food from ...

A close-up of a microneedle patch applied to the underside of pak choy. Credit: Dr. Yangyang Han/MIT News Marelli and his colleagues conducted their study with pak choy (also called pak choi and ...

"We chose pak choy because it's a very important crop in Asia, and also because pak choy is very perishable." Pak choy is typically harvested by cutting the leafy plant from the root system ...

For the study, which will appear in Nano Letters, Marelli and researchers from SMART applied small patches of the microneedles containing melatonin to the base of the leafy vegetable pak choy.

Researchers have developed a new infection-fighting spray for plant crops, which uses nanoparticles to deliver antibacterial ...

The team targeted pak choy, a popular and highly perishable leafy green. Injecting melatonin at the plant base extended shelf life by four days at room temperature and ten days when refrigerated.

In experiments, the microneedle patches increased the longevity of Pak choy plants by between four and 10 days. Previous research has looked at how dipping and spraying plants with melatonin can ...