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In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.

The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state, such as apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, juniper berries and bananas. Seed-associated structures that do not fit these informal criteria are usually called by other names, such as vegetables,pods, nut, ears and cones.

In biology (botany), a “fruit” is a part of a flowering plant that derives from specific tissues of the flower, mainly one or more ovaries. Taken strictly, this definition excludes many structures that are “fruits” in the common sense of the term, such as those produced by non-flowering plants (like juniper berries, which are the seed-containing female cones of conifers.) On the other hand, the botanical sense includes many structures that are not commonly called “fruits”, such as bean pods, corn kernels, wheat grains, tomatoes, the section of a fungus that produces spores, and many more. However, there are several variants of the biological definition of fruit that emphasize different aspects of the enormous variety that is found among plant fruits.

Fruits (in either sense of the word) are the means by which many plants disseminate seeds. Most plants bearing edible fruits, in particular, coevolved with animals in a symbiotic relationship as a means for seed dispersal and nutrition, respectively; in fact, many animals (including humans to some extent) have become dependent on fruits as a source of food. Fruits account for a substantial fraction of world’s agriculturaloutput, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings.

Many fruits that, in a botanical sense, are true fruits are actually treated as vegetables in cooking and food preparation, because they are not particularly sweet. These culinary vegetables include cucurbits (e.g.,squash, pumpkin, and cucumber), tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper. In addition, some spices, such as allspice and chilies, are fruits, botanically speaking. In contrast, occasionally a culinary “fruit” is not a true fruit in the botanical sense. For example, rhubarb is often referred to as a fruit, because it is used to make sweet desserts such as pies, though only the petiole of the rhubarb plant is edible. In the culinary sense of these words, a fruit is usually any sweet-tasting plant product, especially those associated with seed(s), a vegetable is any savoury or less sweet plant product, and a nut is any hard, oily, and shelled plant product.

Technically, a cereal grain is also a kind of fruit, a kind which is termed a caryopsis. However, the fruit wall is very thin, and is fused to the seed coat, so almost all of the edible grain is actually a seed. Therefore, cereal grains, such as corn, wheat and rice are better considered as edible seeds, although some references do list them as fruits. Edible gymnosperm seeds are often misleadingly given fruit names, e.g., pine nuts, ginkgo nuts, and juniper berries.
A fruit results from maturation of one or more flowers, and the gynoecium of the flower(s) forms all or part of the fruit.

Inside the ovary/ovaries are one or more ovules where the megagametophyte contains the mega gamete or egg cell. After double fertilization, these ovules will become seeds. The ovules are fertilized in a process that starts with pollination, which involves the movement of pollen from the stamens to the stigma of flowers. After pollination, a tube grows from the pollen through the stigma into the ovary to the ovule and two sperm are transferred from the pollen to the megagametophyte. Within the megagametophyte one of the two sperm unites with the egg, forming a zygote, and the second sperm enters the central cell forming the endosperm mother cell, which completes the double fertilization process. Later the zygote will give rise to the embryo of the seed, and the endosperm mother cell will give rise to endosperm, a nutritive tissue used by the embryo.

As the ovules develop into seeds, the ovary begins to ripen and the ovary wall, the pericarp, may become fleshy (as in berries or drupes), or form a hard outer covering (as in nuts). In some multiseeded fruits, the extent to which the flesh develops is proportional to the number of fertilized ovules. The pericarp is often differentiated into two or three distinct layers called the exocarp (outer layer, also called epicarp),mesocarp (middle layer), and endocarp (inner layer). In some fruits, especially simple fruits derived from an inferior ovary, other parts of the flower (such as the floral tube, including the petals, sepals, and stamens), fuse with the ovary and ripen with it. In other cases, the sepals, petals and/or stamens and style of the flower fall off. When such other floral parts are a significant part of the fruit, it is called an accessory fruit. Since other parts of the flower may contribute to the structure of the fruit, it is important to study flower structure to understand how a particular fruit forms.

Fruits are so diverse that it is difficult to devise a classification scheme that includes all known fruits. Many common terms for seeds and fruit are incorrectly applied, a fact that complicates understanding of the terminology. Seeds are ripened ovules; fruits are the ripened ovaries or carpels that contain the seeds. To these two basic definitions can be added the clarification that in botanical terminology, a nut is not a type of fruit and not another term for seed, on the contrary to common terminology.

There are three general modes of fruit development:

Apocarpous fruits develop from a single flower having one or more separate carpels, and they are the simplest fruits.
Syncarpous fruits develop from a single gynoecium having two or more carpels fused together.
Multiple fruits form from many different flowers.

Plant scientists have grouped fruits into three main groups, simple fruits, aggregate fruits, and composite or multiple fruits. The groupings are not evolutionarily relevant, since many diverse planttaxa may be in the same group, but reflect how the flower organs are arranged and how the fruits develop.

Fruit Article of the week:

Fresno State students attempt record fruit salad

What can you do with nearly 6 tons of freshly chopped fruit? You make one very, very large fruit salad.

That’s exactly what a team of Fresno State marketing students did Thursday in their attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for biggest fruit salad.
About 30 people that included students, friends and volunteers spent nearly 10 hours at the P-R Farms packinghouse at Willow and Shepherd avenues slicing and dicing about 12,000 pounds of fruit.

They were trying to break the existing record of 8,866 pounds that was set in Peru in 2003.

By Thursday evening, the students said they had beat the record – unofficially – at 10,440 pounds. A makeshift serving bowl – it was actually a 2,500-gallon water tank – was used to hold the fruit while it was weighed on a truck scale.

The salad consisted of sliced peaches, plums, nectarines, apples and Asian pears – all donated by local packinghouses including Kingsburg Orchards and Trinity Fruit Sales.
Nicholas Morales, one of the student organizers, said using the Valley’s agricultural bounty was a natural for trying to break a world record.

“We really wanted to do something related to all the things we grow in the Valley and what better thing than tree fruit, something we are leaders in,” Morales said.
Morales is a student in Fresno State professor Bill Rice’s Strategic Marketing class, which has become well-known for its record-breaking attempts.

Over the years, the students have built huge milk and raisin box containers.

Last year, they were unsuccessful in breaking the record for the world’s largest water balloon fight.

“It is a lot of fun doing these things,” said Fresno State student Sam Mabanta, who helped slice peaches. “And when someone asks me what I got out of going to Fresno State, I can tell them I broke a world record.”

Sylvia Contreras also was proud of her role in the attempt to break a record. She was among nearly two dozen culinary students from Institute of Technology in Clovis that helped cut the fruit.

“It was pretty easy for what we do, but it sure will feel good to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. I will be proud of that,” Contreras said. “And it will be good for Fresno.”

Morales said the students will be forwarding information about the record attempt, including video, news reports and other documentation, to the Guinness headquarters in England for verification.

As for the salad, the fruit was donated to Poverello House, Fresno Rescue Mission, local charities and nonprofit organizations.
“This is really a win-win situation,” said Angel Vasquez, a volunteer. “We are breaking a record and helping to feed the hungry – how good is that?”

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