Rotting fruit

[Egg Born Son]

Odd question...anyone have any ideas on accelerating the rotting process in fruit, apples in particular. I'm using the decay of an apple to demonstrate the passage of time and was supposed to buy the apples over a week ago. I have a week, two at the most to get these fresh apples into a bad way. Any tips? Alternatively a good fruit to use that will decay quickly. The obvious (bananas) doesn't work for the scene, peaches maybe but I would prefer a fruit with a skin that isn't soft to begin with. I asked at the supermarket but the bad apples they had were damaged as well, for the scene I need it to look rotten and untampered with. Thanks.

[mörkö]

I think the best bet would be to ask your nearest garden or such a place that grows such things.

If you want to stay with supermarket stuff, you could experiment in putting them in the oven, or frying them on a pan with some crap, like soy sauce gives good coloring, while being edible even. In your case, maybe low heat in oven could be a good starting point. Makes them soft quick enough, just be carefull to not make them look too much like prepared food There are so many ways a fruit can go bad (will it just dry out or slowly turn to liquid, or catch mold, or mummify, whatever), so depending on what you are looking after, that might or might not work. But that's been good enough for some projects of mine. This is fast process, so you can easily test and make variations.

After softening/killing them with heat, you could try planting some real mold in them. As in, get some mold (preferably from some other fruit so you know that mold species likes rotten fruit) and just put it on top of the apple. Not tried that, but I think the fruit will catch some mold growth quite quickly (I'd guess 1-2 days). If you do that, it kinda can be a work safety issue, so hygienics needs to be taken care of.

Also something I haven't tried, but heard that fruits like apples, avocados, bananas, melons, peaches, pears, and tomatoes emit ethylene gas, which accelerate the aging process of fruits like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leafy greens and lettuce. So you might try storing them together for really natural results. I believe the effect will not be very significant however.

For non-closeups, painting the fruit with glue and throwing some flour on top of them can be convincing enough to simulate mold.

[simonpwood]

If you know any gardeners you could try putting them in the middle of a composter. Everything seems to turn to muck pretty quick there, and in that warm organic environment there must be any number of moulds and insects ready to mess with the fruit. Try to buy fully organic fruit as well, most supermarket stuff lasts unnaturally long times due to the treatments they get. Don't buy any imported stuff, specially where you are in Australia; the Australian customs seem like the biggest Nazis I ever met and have a penchant for irradiating anything natural...just saying'.

[clang]

You can accelerate most fruit ripening by putting the fruit in a paper bag with other already ripe/overripe fruit (especially bananas) - i believe the ethylene gas from the ripe fruit acts as a signal to the less ripe fruit.

I'd expect the same would also work to overripen fruit, especially if you leave the bag in a warm sunny place.