By Lydia Ramsey

If you’ve ever been surprised to see your just-bought produce rot away faster than you’d hoped, take note: you could be putting the wrong fruits and veggies together.

Many fruits produce a barely detectable chemical called ethylene as they ripen. It’s also often sprayed onto fruits and veggies to make produce ripen faster.

But too much ethylene can lead to a loss of chlorophyll (what happens when your leafy greens turn yellow or brown). And the more ripe an ethylene producer is, the more gas it produces. So if one piece of fruit is going bad, you should think about moving it away so that it doesn’t speed things up for the others.

To help you figure out which produce to keep apart, we’ve compiled a list of produce that you should store on its own, produce that you should keep away from other fast-ripening produce, and fruits and veggies that you can store virtually anywhere.

Store alone

These fruits and vegetables give off a lot of the gas and are also pretty susceptible to it:

Apples
Avocado
Ripe bananas: If you want to slow the ripening process down, place plastic wrap over the stems. This should keep the ethylene from getting released.
Cabbage
Eggplant
Lettuce
Melons, including cantaloupe and honeydew
Mangoes
Mushrooms
Nectarines
Onions
Pears
Peaches
Plums
Squash
Tomatoes

OK to store together, but keep away from other fast-ripening produce
These fruits and veggies don’t make a whole lot of ethylene on their own but are sensitive to it:

Asparagus
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Carrots
Green beans
Grapes
Okra
Potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Watermelon
Zucchini

Store anywhere
These fruits and veggies fare alright in the face of ethylene gas, so store them anywhere:

Bell peppers
Berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc.)
Citrus fruits, like lemons and limes
Kale
Pineapples, though they do produce some ethylene.
If you’re looking for a quick way to remember it, as The Kitchn pointed out, it’s mostly fruits that are the ethylene-makers, while vegetables are the ones more likely to feel the detrimental effects of ethylene gas.

IMAGES:

Flickr/David Lenker
Apples are big ethylene producers. vijay chennupati/Flickr
Berries are tough. Flickr / THOR
Maybe don’t put brussels sprouts near your fresh melon. Flickr / jules

For more on this story go to: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-foods-you-shouldnt-store-next-to-each-other-2016-8?utm_source=feedburner&amp%3Butm_medium=referral&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29