Berry

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File:Berberis thunbergii berries.jpg|Japanese barberries

File:Norwegian blueberry.jpg|Bilberry

File:Ribes rubrum2005-07-17.JPG|Redcurrants

File:Lonicera coerulea a3.jpg|Honeysuckle

File:Stachelbeere (Ribes uva-crispa).jpg|Gooseberries

File:Rubus chamaemorus close-up.JPG|Cloudberry

File:Vaccinium corymbosum a2.jpg|Highbush blueberries

File:Black Butte blackberry.jpg|Blackberries

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A berry is a small, pulpy, and often edible fruit. 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. In Britain, soft fruit is a horticultural term for such fruits.

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, such as grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bananas, and chili peppers. Fruits commonly considered berries but excluded by the botanical definition include strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, which are aggregate fruits, and mulberries, which are multiple fruits. Watermelons and pumpkins are giant berries that fall into the category "pepos". A plant bearing berries is said to be or .

Berries are eaten worldwide and often used in jams, preserves, cakes, or pies. Some berries are commercially important. The berry industry varies from country to country as do types of berries cultivated or growing in the wild. Some berries such as raspberries and strawberries have been bred for hundreds of years and are distinct from their wild counterparts, while other berries, such as lingonberries and cloudberries, grow almost exclusively in the wild.

While many berries are edible, some are poisonous to humans, such as those of deadly nightshade and pokeweed. Others, such as the white mulberry, red mulberry, and elderberry, are poisonous when unripe, but edible when ripe.

History

thumb|alt=blackthorn bush|Blackthorn, [[Prunus spinosa]]

Berries have been valuable as a food source for humans since before the start of agriculture, and remain a food source for other primates. 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. In time, humans learned to store berries so that they could be used in the winter. They may be made into fruit preserves, and among Native Americans, mixed with meat and fats as pemmican.

Berries also began to be cultivated in Europe and other countries. Some species of blackberries and raspberries of the genus Rubus have been cultivated since the 17thcentury, while smooth-skinned blueberries and cranberries of the genus Vaccinium have been cultivated in the United States for over a century.

The strawberry was mentioned by ancient Romans, who thought it had medicinal properties, but it was then not a staple of agriculture. The most commonly consumed strawberry, the garden strawberry(F. ananassa), is an accidental hybrid of the Virginia strawberry and a Chilean variety Fragaria chiloensis. It was first noted by a French gardener around the mid 18thcentury 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. Soon after, began to study the breeding of strawberries and made several discoveries crucial to the science of plant breeding, such as the sexual reproduction of strawberry. Later, in the early 1800s, English breeders of strawberry made varieties of F. ananassa which were important in strawberry breeding in Europe, and hundreds of cultivars have since been produced through the breeding of strawberries.

Etymology

The Old English word () comes from Proto-Germanic, variously reconstructed as , , (source also of Old Norse, Middle Dutch, German, , Old Saxon, Gothic, ), which is of unknown origin. This and "apple" are the only fruit names in modern English which are descended from "native" Germanic words.

Botanical definition

In botanical terminology, a berry is a simple fruit with seeds and pulp produced from the ovary of a single flower. It is fleshy throughout, except for the seeds. It does not have a special "line of weakness" along which it splits to release the seeds when ripe (i.e. it is indehiscent). A berry may develop from an ovary with one or more carpels (the female reproductive structures of a flower). The seeds are usually embedded in the fleshy interior of the ovary, but there are some non-fleshy examples such as peppers, with air rather than pulp around their seeds. The differences between the everyday and botanical uses of "berry" result in three categories: those fruits that are berries under both definitions; those fruits that are botanical berries but not commonly known as berries; and those parts of plants commonly known as berries that are not botanical berries, and may not even be fruits.

Berries under both definitions include blueberries, cranberries, lingonberries, and the fruits of many other members of the heather family, as well as gooseberries, goji berries and elderberries. The fruits of some "currants" (Ribes species), such as blackcurrants, red currants and white currants, are botanical berries, and are treated as horticultural berries (or as soft fruit in the UK), even though their most commonly used names do not include the word "berry".

Botanical berries not commonly known as berries include bananas, tomatoes, but botanically are small stone fruits or drupes, like plums or apricots.

Junipers and yews are commonly said to have berries, but these plants do not produce botanical fruits at all: they are gymnosperms, specifically conifers, not angiosperms (flowering plants). Their "berries" are highly-modified seed-bearing cones. 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. The resemblance of these plant structures to botanical berries provides a striking example of convergent evolution in different plant clades.

Cultivation

thumb|[[Rubus berries have been crossbred to create a diverse range of brambleberries with desirable traits]]

Strawberries have been grown in gardens in Europe since the 14thcentury. Huckleberries of all varieties are not fully domesticated, but domestication was attempted from 1994 to 2010 for the economically significant western huckleberry. Many other varieties of Vaccinium are likewise not domesticated, with some being of commercial importance.

thumb|[[Cloudberry, common flowering plant in the cool temperate regions, alpine and arctic tundra and boreal forest.]]

Agricultural methods

Like most other food crops, berries are commercially grown, with both conventional pest management and integrated pest management(IPM) practices. Organically certified berries are becoming more widely available. However, too low a temperature will kill the crops: blueberries do not tolerate temperatures below , raspberries, depending on variety, may tolerate as low as , and blackberries are injured below . but which 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. Cranberries, however, are frost sensitive, and should be stored at . Advancements in molecular biology and genetic engineering allow for a more efficient and better targeted approach in the selection for a desirable genotype, via marker-assisted selection, for example. Genetic modification techniques can also be used for breeding berries. American persimmons, pawpaws, Pacific crabapples, and prickly pears.

Commercial production

In the year 2005, there were of land worldwide cultivating berries, with produced.<sup>:4</sup>

Economics

thumb|right|Mixed frozen berries

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 berry picking. 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.

Phytochemicals and color

Once ripened, berries have a contrasting color to their background (often of green leaves), making them visible and attractive to frugivorous animals and birds. This assists the wide dispersal of the plants' seeds. Although berry pigments have antioxidant properties ', there is no physiological evidence established to date that berry pigments have actual antioxidant or any other functions within the human body. Consequently, it is not permitted to claim that foods containing polyphenols have antioxidant health value on product labels in the US or Europe.

Culinary significance

Use in baked goods

thumb|Blueberry|alt=A slice of blueberry pie

thumb|[[Elderberry|alt=Dark red jam on bread]]

Berries are commonly used in pies or tarts, such as blueberry pie, blackberry pie, and strawberry pie.

Berries are often used in baking, such as blueberry muffins, blackberry muffins, berry cobblers, berry crisps, berry cakes, berry buckles, berry crumb cakes, berry teacakes, and berry cookies. Berries are commonly incorporated whole into the batter for baking, and care is often taken so as to not burst the berries. Frozen or dried berries may be preferable for some baked berry products. Fresh berries are also often incorporated into baked berry desserts, sometimes with cream, either as a filling to the dessert or as a topping. blueberry juice, raspberry juice, goji berry juice, acai juice, aronia berry juice, and strawberry juice. Wine is the principal alcoholic beverage made from berries(grapes). Fruit wines are commonly made out of other berries. In most cases, sugars must be added to the berry juices in the process of chaptalization to increase the alcohol content of the wine. Examples of fruit wines made from berries include: elderberry wine, strawberry wine, blueberry wine, blackberry wine, redcurrant wine, huckleberry wine, goji wine and cranberry wine. Berries are used in some styles of beer, particularly framboise (made with raspberry) and other fruit lambics.

Dried

thumb|Various [[Dried fruit|dried berries]]

Currants, raisins and sultanas are examples of dried grape berries, and many other commercially important berries are available in dried form.

Fruit preserves

Berries are perishable fruits with a short shelf life, and are often preserved by drying, freezing, pickling or making fruit preserves. Berries such as blackberry, blueberry, boysenberry, lingonberry, loganberry, raspberry, and strawberry are often used in jams and jellies. In the United States, Native Americans were "the first to make preserves from blueberries". strawberries, and blueberries. Strawberries can be battered and quickly fried in a deep fryer. Sauces made from berries, such as cranberry sauce, can be frozen until hard, battered, and deep fried. Cranberry sauce is a traditional food item for Thanksgiving, and similar sauces can be made from many other berries such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and huckleberries.

In culture

Dye

Berries have been used in some cultures for dyeing. Many berries contain juices that can easily stain, affording use as a natural dye. For example, blackberries are useful for making dyes, especially when ripe berries can easily release juice to produce a colorfast effect. Rubus berries, such as blackberry, raspberry, black raspberry, dewberry, loganberry, and thimbleberry all produce dye colors. These were once used by Native Americans. A 2016 meta-analysis found that berry consumption can significantly lower body mass index, low density lipoprotein (LDL) and systolic blood pressure.

References

External links

of the National Berry Crops Initiative (United States)