Costa Rican scientists are extracting valuable materials from the peel and stubble of pineapples.

哥斯达黎加的科学家们从菠萝的皮和切口处提取出了珍贵的化学原料。

撰文播音：黛比·庞彻纳（Debbie Ponchner）

翻译：陈美娟

校对：张艺箫

Pineapples—just thinking about this delicious tropical fruit, rich in vitamin C, might make your mouth water. But have you ever stopped to think where the peel and other waste from this crop end up?

菠萝——光是想想这种美味的富含维他命C的热带水果就会让你流口水。但对于这种作物的皮和尾部被浪费的部分你会想到什么呢？

We do here in the small country of Costa Rica, the world’s largest producer of pineapples. Pineapple production generates about 4.5 million tons of crop residues every year in our Central American nation.

我们现在在哥斯达黎加，一个生产世界上最多菠萝的小国家。每年，中美洲的菠萝产业都会产生450万吨的植物残渣。

And that waste is tough stuff. The plant is made of strong cellulose that takes a long time to biodegrade. And most of it is either burnt or ends up dumped in open forests, where disease-causing mosquitoes and fungi thrive off its high sugar content.

这些作物垃圾都很硬。这种植物由致密的纤维素构成，生物分解需要花很长时间。它们多数不是被烧掉就是被扔到丛林里，而丛林里致病的蚊虫和真菌靠攫取这些高糖分的内芯生存。

But hidden in pineapple peels is a treasure—of nanomaterials. Scientists at Costa Rica’s National Laboratory of Nanotechnology (LANOTEC) have been extracting valuable nanocellulose from the peel and stubble of the pineapple. This nanocellulose can be used in the pharmaceutical, food and medical industries.

然而，藏在菠萝皮里的物质是珍贵的纳米材料。哥斯达黎加国家纳米技术实验室(LANOTEC)的科学家们已经在菠萝的果皮和切口处提取出珍贵的纳米纤维了。这种纳米纤维可以应用到制药、食品和医疗行业中。

And it turns out that, while harvesting that nanocellulose, you can also get rosettelike silica-based microparticles. These tiny traces have potential as reinforcement in adhesives, in the biomedical field, and even as a source of silica for fertilizers. Scientists from LANOTEC describe these applications in the journal Scientific Reports. [Yendry R. Corrales-Ureña et al., Biogenic silica-based microparticles obtained as a sub-product of the nanocellulose extraction process rom pineapple peels]

结果证明，在收获这种纳米纤维的同时还能获得玫瑰状的二氧化硅微粒。这些微小颗粒有潜力应用到粘合剂制造业、生物医学领域甚至是化肥加工业。哥斯达黎加国家纳米技术实验室的科学家们将这些应用发表在《科学报告》杂志上。

José R. Vega-Baudrit is the director of LANOTEC and one of the authors of the paper. “Pineapple residue is something that has been studied a lot, but nobody had seen this particle in the skin of the fruit.”

何塞·r.·维加-博德里（José R. Vega-Baudrit）是哥斯达黎加国家纳米技术实验室的负责人和报告的作者之一。他说：“菠萝肥料的应用已经被研究了很久，但没有人曾经在这种水果的表皮发现这种物质。”

It was chemical engineer and material scientist Yendry Corrales-Ureña who noticed the silica-based microparticles.

正是身为化学工程师和材料科学家的闫德利·科拉莱斯-乌雷纳（Yendry Corrales-Ureña）发现了这种玫瑰型的二氧化硅微粒。

“I began to study the plant, to make the cuts, to see what it had, and incredibly, after doing the synthesis, I began to see those rosettes, like flowers, that did not fall apart under duress. It was wonderful. We had thousands, millions, of the same structures left over.”

“我开始研究这种植物，制造切口，观察里面有什么，然后让我惊讶的是，做了合成之后我看到了那种像花一样的玫瑰型物质，它不会因为碾压而分散。这太神奇了。我们留下了千万个有相同结构的物质。”

The pineapple silica differs from silica nanospheres that are synthesized in labs for various applications.

菠萝二氧化硅与那些应用很广的实验室二氧化硅纳米球不同。

YCU: “This is a silica that the pineapple plant processes on its own, and it is of very high purity.”

闫德利·科拉莱斯-乌雷纳说：“这是一种菠萝自身合成的二氧化硅，纯度很高。”

Most commercial fertilizers use silica. And Corrales-Ureña’s main interest in the rosettelike silica-based microparticles is as a fertilizer component. The next steps in that line of research will be to determine if parts other than the peels also have silica nanoparticles, and to develop an efficient fertilizer using them.

大多商用化肥含有二氧化硅。闫德利·科拉莱斯-乌雷纳主要感兴趣的是玫瑰型二氧化硅微粒作为化肥原料的效用。研究计划的下一步将会确定菠萝除了皮之外的其他部分是否也会含有二氧化硅纳米颗粒，以及怎样利用它们研发出一种高效的化肥。