Institut Teknologi Bandung

Prof. Fenny was born in 1972 and established as a professor at the age of 50, precisely on November 1st, 2022. Her historical education from Kindergarten to the Master's Program was taken in Bandung before she continued her doctoral study at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Throughout her career as a lecturer, Prof. Fenny has succeeded in graduating more than 100 students from bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs. Prof. Fenny has actively conducted some research as well, especially on topics related to bananas. Thus, she is nicknamed "banana lady" by her colleagues at SITH.

Her research was published in 51 Scopus-indexed articles as well as 9 books consisting of 5 monographs and 4 book chapters. Furthermore, Prof. Fenny also has 5 patents for her research, the 2 of which were granted. Thanks to her services and achievements, she was given various awards from the national level to the international level, for a total of 14 awards.

Her oration topic was inspired by her worries about conventional postharvest treatments, which cause short shelf lives for bananas and potential losses for farmers and traders. On the contrary, in Indonesia itself, bananas have a wide range of biodiversity and serve as an important food commodity.

Indonesia is the third-largest banana producer in the world, but the rank drops drastically if it comes to banana exports.
"Our worries towards the fruits, the farmers, the traders, and the losses initiate this journey of postharvest studies. Hopefully we can contribute expertise in postharvest treatments, especially postharvest of agricultural products in Indonesia", she said.

The variety of bananas in Indonesia has a lot of potential for functional food sources and other derivative products. Consequently, there must be postharvest technological developments to guarantee the banana’s quality. The suitable postharvest technology strategies have to be adjusted to the ripening process of bananas.

According to Prof. Fenny, the fruit ripening process can be controlled by two strategies of ethylene biosynthesis control: control at the plant or fruit level and control at the environmental level.

Ethylene biosynthesis control at the environmental level is done through genetic modification. An option to silence the ethylene synthesizer genes is Gene knockout or RNA interference, which can decrease their performance. The decreasing performance of ethylene synthesizer genes will directly slow down the fruit ripening process. Thus, the fruit’s shelf life is longer than usual.

On the other hand, ethylene control at the environmental level is done through ethylene synthesis inhibition and ethylene degradation. The innovation is food packaging with a modified atmosphere using bamboo storage boxes called Food Storage Chambers (FSC).

The other innovation is an edible coating using sea organisms in the form of chitosan and carrageenan. The formed layer from the coating process can prevent oxygen from entering the fruit’s tissue and inhibit the process of ethylene biosynthesis.

The various innovations of Prof. Fenny and her team have proven effective in banana postharvest treatments to produce better fruit quality. In the future, she will continue developing her research in this field in order to support the maximization of local banana biodiversity in Indonesia.

"Our studies hopefully can have benefits for postharvest technology developments, especially bananas with the specific conditions and needs in Indonesia," she concluded.

Reporter: Hanifa Juliana (Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota, 2020)

Translator: Hanifa Juliana (Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota, 2020)

Editor: Anggi Nurdiani (Manajemen, 2021)