Know your foods!

According to science, the tomato is a fruit and so are pumpkins and cucumbers. In other words, fruits are the fleshy things with seeds. The botanical definition of a fruit is an organ that contains seeds, protecting the seeds as they develop and often aiding in the seed dispersal.
Flowering and fruiting is part of the plant’s reproductive cycle and once the flower gets pollenated it develops the seed, which is the next generation of plants.
“Generally the fruit is the maturing ovary that develops around the seed,” Dr Darbyshire, a researcher in the Faculty of Veterinary and Agriculatural Science explains.
“Fruits tend to be the fleshy parts housing the seeds and the fact that they are delicious is part of the plan for seed dispersal. Humans like many animals like to eat fruits and we ‘release’ the seeds and therefore disperse the plants into new locations. For example, this is why you see the odd apple tree along the Hume Highway.
“But there are variations on a theme when it comes to the fruiting body of plants. For example botanists refer to the strawberry as an accessory fruit because the fleshy part is formed from tissue other than the ovary.
“Also, the brownish or whitish specks on the strawberry which are usually thought to be the seeds, are in fact the true fruits, called achenes, and each of them surrounds a tiny seed,” Dr Darbyshire says.
Edible vegetables are other parts of the plant; carrots being roots, celery the stems, and broccoli are the flowering heads. When broccoli turns a little yellow it’s the tiny flowers in bloom.
Other misunderstood botanical label are nuts and legumes.
Tree nuts are really just fruits with a hard shell, while peanuts are not really nuts at all, they are in fact legumes, which include plants like beans and lentils. Similarly coffee beans are not actual beans but are technically seeds from inside berries.
Dr Darbyshire says the way to separate the wheat from the chaff, or in this case, the nuts from the fruits, is that a nut is actually a non-fleshy fruit with a hard shell with usually one seed.
“Nuts like almonds and walnuts grow on trees. The edible part of the nut is actually the seed. In botany, a further constraint to being classified as a nut is that the shell does not open to release the seed when it ripens.
“Think of macadamias, which have a very hard shell, which we have to crack to get inside. Legumes are different from nuts in that they contain multiple seeds and they open naturally.”
Dr Darbyshire researches the impacts of climate change on fruit trees such as apples, pears, and cherries with an aim to inform future adaptation strategies for the fruit tree industry so they can make the most of their crops.
One example is to erect shade netting. With the increase in extreme weather conditions, early season apples like the Gala variety that ripen in January and February are at greater risk of being burnt.
Shade net use is becoming more commonplace in the fruit industry with greater uptake likely to combat extreme heat damage.
Dr Darbyshire’s team is also comparing flowering timing in response to different temperature conditions in Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, allowing for information on regional differences to be captured. Her work feeds into creating action strategies for fruit tree crops.
“Recently I have been examining apple trees after they lose their leaves and enter a dormancy process,” she says. “We want to know how the trees know when winter begins and when it has past, meaning it is safe to flower. The question is, will it be cold enough in future for trees to continue to flower and hence fruit normally?
“The project is a collaborative effort with the University of Melbourne working with several partners including the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources.
www.fvas.unimelb.edu.au