Berry
Typically, berries are juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet, sour or tart, and do not have a stone or pit, although many pips or seeds may be present.
[1] Common examples of berries in the culinary sense are strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, white currants, blackcurrants, and redcurrants.
[3][4][5] The common usage of the term "berry" is different from the scientific or botanical definition of a berry, which refers to a fleshy fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower where the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion (pericarp).
The botanical definition includes many fruits that are not commonly known or referred to as berries,[6] such as grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bananas, and chili peppers.
They were a seasonal staple for early hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, and wild berry gathering remains a popular activity in Europe and North America today.
It was first noted by a French gardener around the mid 18th century that, when F. moschata and F. virginiana were planted in between rows of F. chiloensis, the Chilean strawberry would bear abundant and unusually large fruits.
[16] In botanical terminology, a berry is a simple fruit with seeds and pulp produced from the ovary of a single flower.
Blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are kinds of aggregate fruit;[1] they contain seeds from different ovaries of a single flower.
In juniper berries, used to flavour gin, the cone scales, which are hard and woody in most conifers, are instead soft and fleshy when ripe.
The bright red berries of yews consist of a fleshy outgrowth (aril) almost enclosing the poisonous seed.
[26] Many land-grant university extension offices suggest that strawberries should not be planted more than five years on the same site, due to the danger of black root rot (though many other illnesses go by the same name), which in the past has been controlled in major commercial production by annual methyl bromide fumigation[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] but is largely prohibited now.
Besides the number of years in production, soil compaction, the frequency of fumigation, and herbicide usages increase the appearance of black root rot in strawberries.
[34] As blueberries and cranberries thrive in soils that are not hospitable to most other plants, and conventional fertilizers are toxic to them, the primary concern when growing them organically is bird management.
[35] Several discoveries in the science of breeding berries were made in the 18th century by Antoine Nicolas Duchesne in his work on strawberries.
Breeding may seek to increase the size and yield of the fruit, improve the flavor and quality of its nutrient content, such as antioxidants, expand the harvest season, and produce cultivars with resistance to diseases, tolerance of hot or cold conditions, and other desirable traits.
Examples include beach plums,[38] American persimmons, pawpaws, Pacific crabapples, and prickly pears.
[25]:4 In certain regions, berrypicking can be a large part of the economy, and it is becoming increasingly common for western European countries such as Sweden and Finland to import cheap labor from Thailand or Bulgaria to do the berry picking.
[40][41] This practice has come under scrutiny in the past years because of the low wages and poor living standard for the "berry-pickers", as well as the lack of worker safety.
[40] In the late 2010s in the US, reduced migration from Mexico and increased minimum wage standards have made finding "stoop-work" labourers to pick the strawberry crop difficult and costly.
[42] Once ripened, berries have a contrasting color to their background (often of green leaves), making them visible and attractive to frugivorous animals and birds.
[48] Consequently, it is not permitted to claim that foods containing polyphenols have antioxidant health value on product labels in the United States or Europe.
In most cases, sugars must be added to the berry juices in the process of Chaptalization to increase the alcohol content of the wine.
For example, blackberries are useful for making dyes, especially when ripe berries can easily release juice to produce a colorfast effect.
[80][81] A 2016 review found that berry consumption can significantly lower body mass index, low density lipoprotein (LDL) and systolic blood pressure.
