Fruits Flashcards
What is a fruit botanically?
- Mature, ripened, ovary of a flower with the contents and possibly accessory structures
Fruits are all variations on the development of what part of the flower?
- Ovary
What do seeds mature from?
- Ovules
How do fruits develop?
- Usually mature after fertilization
- Seeds mature from ovules
- But can mature w/o fertilization or w/o seed formation
What are examples of fruits that mature without fertilization/seed formation?
- Selected seedless mutants (navel orange)
- Sterile cross (seedless watermelon)
Why do plants make fruits?
?
Why do humans like fruits?
- Sweet, juicy
- Good source of water soluble vitamins
Simple fruits
- Fruit from a flower w/ single ovary
- Ovary simple or compound
- Fleshy (fruit) or dry (nuts/grains)
What does the Nature of fruit depend on in simple fruits?
- Depends on what happens w/ the 3 layers of the ovary wall, the Pericarp (Exocarp, mesocarp, endocarp)
Fleshy fruit has what pericarp?
- Part or all fleshy pericarp
Berry fruit
- All pericarp soft, mesocarp fleshy (blueberries, strawberries, etc.)
Drupe fruit
- Mesocarp fleshy, endocarp hard
- what fruits fit this description?
Hesperidium fruit
- Skin and rind from combined exocarp and mesocarp
- Glands of essential oils
- Endocarp divided into sections filled with sacs
Citrus fruits originated where?
- All from genus Citrus, Rutaceae, citrus family
- Small evergreen tree
- Originated in Asia
- Cannot tolerate freezing temps, once a luxury in Northern latitudes
When did citrus arrive in Europe and how?
- Brought to Europe over land via Middle East in 1st century
When and how did citrus arrive in America’s?
- 1565
- Spanish/Portuguese brought them (also brought things back to America, didn’t just bring things from America)
What essential vitamin for humans does citrus contain?
- Vitamin C
- Good for long sea voyages to prevent scurvy and fatalities
Who produces the most citrus fruit in the world?
USA
What are 2 notable fruits where the fruit is a berry, but also includes accessory flower parts that are not from the ovary?
- Apple (includes pears)
- Banana
Apple, where from
- Malus, Rosaceae, rose family (also pears, Pyrus)
- Native to central and western Asia
- Needs cold temp to flower
Pomes
- Fleshy part of apples, comes from perianth (petal/sepal)
- Uneaten core is ovary part (endocarp=seed)
What is the most important temperate fruit crop?
- Apple
- 50% consumed as fresh fruit
How many varieties of apple are commonly sold? How many grown at Plant Genetic Resource Unit at Cornell University? How many more varieties stored as seeds?
- A dozen sold
- 2500 grown at PGRU
- 500 stored as seeds
Banana, and where from
- Musa, Musaceae, banana family
- World’s largest herb, bundle of leaf bases, 20ft tall
- Monocot
- Native to southeast Asia, wet tropical climate
- Does not grow in North America
How many species of Banana are there?
- 50 plus species
- Many inedible
What is the most eaten fruit in the world?
- Banana
- As fruit it is sweet, has sugar, vitamins, and minerals
- As vegetable it is starch (plantains must be cooked, very starchy)
- Portion eaten is sterile ovary tissue
Banana cultivation
- Most cultivars are sterile
- Vegetative reproduction, put out corms (Rhizomes)
- Produce fruit continuously
- Derived from complex history of mutation, hybridization and selection of 2 species
- Wildtype has many seeds
Production of bananas
- Grown in tropical countries and shipped long distances world-wide
- Ship green bananas to reduce bruising
- Can be ripened w/ ethylene gas (natural plant hormone)
- More yellow when ripened artificially
Most common banana in Europe and North America
- Cavendish cultivar
- A monogenetic group, high risk to devastation by pathogen
What is a Banana Republic
- National economy based on one major product such as plantation bananas
- Reliant on cheap labour
- Controlled by elite class, business, military
- Occurred in Central America (Honduras, Guatemala)
- Exploited in turn by multinational (American) companies
