Fruit use
The use of fruit encompasses all forms of how fruit - a special type of fruit - is used by humans.
The main groups of fruit species here are pome fruit , stone fruit , soft fruit and seeds fruit . There are different types of fruit of these species, i.e. cultivated varieties :
- Table fruit ( fresh fruit ) describes types of fruit that are suitable for consumption without any further preparation . They are usually characterized by particularly high quality.
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Commercial fruit refers to fruit that is intended for further processing or preparation or is not suitable as dessert fruit, such as windfalls .
- The words for economic fruit refer explicitly fruit varieties, which exclusively or primarily, as a budget fruit preservation ( storage fruit , dried fruit ) or processing ( juice of fruit ( Most fruit ), cooking fruit used), as well as feed fruit for animal feed.
- As the lowest quality of fruit, industrial fruit is considered a raw material for the production of various chemicals.
In addition to harvesting wild fruits , fruit growing forms the basis for useful fruit . Nowadays, fruit is mainly grown in fruit plantations . The custom in Central Europe used to be to plant the dessert fruit in the orchard or on the house in a trellis , the commercial fruit in orchards or in fruit avenues . Wild fruits are also included in fruit use .
Since most aspects of the original fruit use hardly play an economic role anymore, superfluous fruit is generally disposed of or left on the site.
The most widely produced types of fruit worldwide are bananas (102 million tons in 2012, + 37 million tons of plantains), followed by apples (76), grapes (67) and oranges (62).
Dessert fruit
In local fruit, was that Tafelobst is directly suitable for consumption by the plant, so that for picking and eating ripeness coincide. Such varieties are generally intended to be eaten soon and can only be stored for a limited time. In modern fruit growing , preservation can be used to delay consumption until it is ready for the market . Therefore, typical dessert fruit varieties make up the vast majority of all fruit that is now on the market in our area.
Tropical fruits , ie fruits not native to Europe, are cooled by ship , deep-frozen , in the absence of air or in a protective atmosphere - or fresh as " flying fruit " - imported and are mainly marketed as dessert fruit.
With most types of dessert fruit, the fruit must be picked directly in order not to impair the quality. Otherwise they are considered to be inferior windfalls.
Even fruits that are flawless in themselves and do not meet today's strict consumer expectations are considered rejected and are further processed. Generous overproduction therefore ensures that a sufficient amount of fine fruit can be made available even in poor harvest years . An exception to this is organic agriculture , which brings fruit to the market in the same quality spectrum as it was harvested and which looks for other focuses in its quality criteria.
Commercial fruit
Due to modern fruit growing and the methods of conservation, commercial fruit varieties only play an economic role for a few fruits. Until the middle of the 20th century, however, the food situation of the European population was based on self-sufficiency and local supplies. For this reason, many local types of fruit were cultivated in numerous varieties, including regional ones. The preservation of these "old varieties" - threatened with extinction due to their economic insignificance - is only expedient in connection with knowledge of their use and their area of origin. This also includes their cultivation as orchards , fruit avenues or other historical multiple uses of medium-quality cultivated areas.
Windfalls
Fruits that have fallen from the tree are called windfalls (cf. picking up ).
- Dessert fruit, which generally has to be picked directly in order to be of usable quality, usually suffers damage and is only suitable for further processing.
- Some fruits were principally not harvested, but rather picked from the ground, such as nuts . The service tree is also of good taste when it is overripe .
- Fruit that falls from the tree due to natural influences such as hail or storm , or due to diseases , is generally immature and therefore completely useless.
Household fruit
Types of fruit that are intended for preservation and only later consumption are characterized in particular by a relatively high content of natural preservatives .
Storage fruit
The breeding of special storage fruit varieties takes advantage of the fact that some fruits can "ripen" ( climacteric fruits ), so they do not have to ripen on the plant. Storage fruits are usually relatively thick-skinned varieties that are still inedible when harvested.
- The particular suitability of the cultivated apple for this purpose makes it the most important local fruit. Some lager pears could be kept until January, but only with apples are there varieties that do not spoil until May. As a result, there were a myriad of types of lager apple .
Dried and dried fruit
Dried fruit is fruit that is dried by drying (kilning) and is therefore extremely durable. Varieties with mostly reduced juice content but firm pulp are suitable for drying.
- The most important local dried fruits are apples, pears (then called Kletze ), plums (plums), raisins (grapes).
Juice fruit (cider fruit)
Juice fruit - also: Most fruit - denotes types of fruit with mostly particularly high water and fruit sugar content. The fruits are juiced after harvest and then fermented under certain circumstances . (The use of the word “ must ” includes regionally different general “ fruit juice ” or just “fermented fruit juice”).
- The most important example here is the grape , the cultivation of which is a separate branch of the economy, viticulture . (But table grapes count as table fruit)
- Of economic importance in the EU "juice fruits" only in apple and orange , which constitute the vast majority share of trade with fruit juices.
- In earlier times, apples and pears were by far the most important juice fruits because they could be cold-pressed : This is why there is the explicit variety designation Mostapfel und Mostpirne .
- Most of the local fruits had to be hot-extracted and were not grown explicitly as juice fruits, but rather inferior fruits were used for it. This case is the only one where new special varieties are bred in modern fruit growing in order to satisfy the demand for unusual types of juice.
Cooked fruit
Fruits and types of fruit that are suitable for the preparation of dishes are considered cooked fruit . These are characterized by a medium fructose content, a certain acidity, but especially by aromas that are not sensitive to heat , but only then come into their own. Meals that are made with the help of unsuitable varieties usually remain bland and have to be "fined" by adding too much sugar or aromatic substances. In breeding, emphasis is also placed on easy separability of the skin , pulp and core or core . Cooked fruit is also used to make compotes that are consumed directly.
- Here, too, the apple must be named as by far the most important representative.
Preserving fruit
As Einmachobst declared fruit that is for canning is has usually a very high sugar content and generally high levels of fruit acids and natural preservatives (eg. As the derived from apples pectin ), which in direct consumption of digestion are not necessarily conducive . Be Preserved Muse , jams (jams), jellies and the like:
- In addition to apples etc., these include local berries such as lingonberries or stone fruit such as apricot or, in the southern German-Austrian region, plum ( Powidl ).
- In addition, fruits that are more or less inedible raw and are therefore hardly called fruit can be made edible by boiling them down, such as the quince or the elderberry ( elder ).
In general, the term is also used for certain types of fruit (in the sense of cultivars) that are particularly suitable for preserving due to their special properties, such as particularly firm peaches that do not disintegrate when heated during the boiling process.
Fodder fruit
All fruit that was not suitable for human consumption, but also not spoiled, served as valuable feed in a subsistence economy , especially in pig fattening , but also for cattle , sheep and goats , small livestock and of course the most valuable workhorse, the horse . This application also only plays a subordinate role.
Industrial fruit
Industrial fruit is used to produce various natural food additives such as fruit sugar , pectin (which is obtained from apples), vitamin C or industrial alcohol . But since the production of nature-identical food additives and easier-to- harvest fruits such as potatoes and sugar beet are cheaper for alcohol, industrial fruit is not an important economic factor .
See also
- Apple cabbage
- Pear syrup (pear syrup )
- Plum jam (Latwerge, Powidl)