Fruits

Question 1

What is a fruit botanically?

Answer 1

• Mature, ripened, ovary of a flower with the contents and possibly accessory structures

Question 2

Fruits are all variations on the development of what part of the flower?

Answer 2

• Ovary

Question 3

What do seeds mature from?

Answer 3

• Ovules

Question 4

How do fruits develop?

Answer 4

• Usually mature after fertilization
• Seeds mature from ovules
• But can mature w/o fertilization or w/o seed formation

Question 5

What are examples of fruits that mature without fertilization/seed formation?

Answer 5

• Selected seedless mutants (navel orange)

- Sterile cross (seedless watermelon)

Question 6

Why do plants make fruits?

Answer 6

?

Question 7

Why do humans like fruits?

Answer 7

• Sweet, juicy

- Good source of water soluble vitamins

Question 8

Simple fruits

Answer 8

• Fruit from a flower w/ single ovary
• Ovary simple or compound
• Fleshy (fruit) or dry (nuts/grains)

Question 9

What does the Nature of fruit depend on in simple fruits?

Answer 9

• Depends on what happens w/ the 3 layers of the ovary wall, the Pericarp (Exocarp, mesocarp, endocarp)

Question 10

Fleshy fruit has what pericarp?

Answer 10

• Part or all fleshy pericarp

Question 11

Berry fruit

Answer 11

• All pericarp soft, mesocarp fleshy (blueberries, strawberries, etc.)

Question 12

Drupe fruit

Answer 12

• Mesocarp fleshy, endocarp hard

- what fruits fit this description?

Question 13

Hesperidium fruit

Answer 13

• Skin and rind from combined exocarp and mesocarp
• Glands of essential oils
• Endocarp divided into sections filled with sacs

Question 14

Citrus fruits originated where?

Answer 14

• All from genus Citrus, Rutaceae, citrus family
• Small evergreen tree
• Originated in Asia
• Cannot tolerate freezing temps, once a luxury in Northern latitudes

Question 15

When did citrus arrive in Europe and how?

Answer 15

• Brought to Europe over land via Middle East in 1st century

Question 16

When and how did citrus arrive in America’s?

Answer 16

• 1565

- Spanish/Portuguese brought them (also brought things back to America, didn’t just bring things from America)

Question 17

What essential vitamin for humans does citrus contain?

Answer 17

• Vitamin C

- Good for long sea voyages to prevent scurvy and fatalities

Question 18

Who produces the most citrus fruit in the world?

Answer 18

USA

Question 19

What are 2 notable fruits where the fruit is a berry, but also includes accessory flower parts that are not from the ovary?

Answer 19

• Apple (includes pears)

- Banana

Question 20

Apple, where from

Answer 20

• Malus, Rosaceae, rose family (also pears, Pyrus)
• Native to central and western Asia
• Needs cold temp to flower

Question 21

Pomes

Answer 21

• Fleshy part of apples, comes from perianth (petal/sepal)

- Uneaten core is ovary part (endocarp=seed)

Question 22

What is the most important temperate fruit crop?

Answer 22

• Apple

- 50% consumed as fresh fruit

Question 23

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?

Answer 23

• A dozen sold
• 2500 grown at PGRU
• 500 stored as seeds

Question 24

Banana, and where from

Answer 24

• 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

Question 25

How many species of Banana are there?

Answer 25

• 50 plus species

- Many inedible

Question 26

What is the most eaten fruit in the world?

Answer 26

• 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

Question 27

Banana cultivation

Answer 27

• 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

Question 28

Production of bananas

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

Most common banana in Europe and North America

Answer 29

• Cavendish cultivar

- A monogenetic group, high risk to devastation by pathogen

Question 30

What is a Banana Republic

Answer 30

• 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