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At least 55 million tonnes of apples were grown worldwide in 2005, with a value of about $10 billion. China produced about two-fifth of this total. United States is the second leading producer, with more than 7.5% of the world production. Turkey, France, Italy and Iran are among the leading apple exporters.

In the United States, more than 60% of all the apples sold commercially are grown in Washington state. Imported apples from New Zealand and other more temperate areas are competing with US production and increasing each year.

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Fruit:

Here are lists of fruits considered edible in some cuisines - Fruits of temperate climates are almost universally borne on trees or woody shrubs or liana - The Family Rosaceae dominates the temperate fruits, both in numbers and in importance - In non-technical usage, berry means any small fruit that can be eaten whole and lacks objectionable seeds - Some fruits native to Asia or of Asian Origin.

Banana:

While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar 'Cavendish' (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10-20 years - Most bananas grown worldwide are used for local consumption. In the tropics, bananas, especially cooking bananas, represent a major source of food, as well as a major source of income for smallholder farmers - There are two forms of banana allergy - The banana plant has long been a source of fibre for high quality textiles. In Japan, the cultivation of banana for clothing and household use dates back to at least the 13th century - Banana fibre is also used in the production of banana paper.

Growing apples. Pests and diseases

The trees are susceptible to a number of fungal and bacterial diseases and insect pests. Nearly all commercial orchards pursue an aggressive program of chemical sprays to maintain high fruit quality, tree health, and high yields. A trend in orchard management is the use of organic methods. These use a less aggressive and direct methods of conventional farming. Instead of spraying potent chemicals, often shown to be potentially dangerous and maleficent to the tree in the long run, organic methods include encouraging or discouraging certain cycles and pests. To control a specific pest, organic growers might encourage the prosperity of its natural predator instead of outright killing it, and with it the natural biochemistry around the tree. Organic apples generally have the same or greater taste than conventionally grown apples, with reduced cosmetic appearances.

Among the most serious disease problems are fireblight, a bacterial disease; and Gymnosporangium rust, apple scab, and black spot, three fungal diseases.

The plum curculio is the most serious insect pest. Others include Apple maggot and codling moth.

Young apple trees are also prone to mammal pests like mice and deer, which feed on the soft bark of the trees, especially in winter.

Organic apples are commonly produced in the United States. Organic production is difficult in Europe, though a few orchards have done so with commercial success, using disease-resistant cultivars and the very best cultural controls. The latest tool in the organic repertoire is a spray of a light coating of kaolin clay, which forms a physical barrier to some pests, and also helps prevent apple sun scald.

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Fruit:

Here are lists of fruits considered edible in some cuisines - Fruits of temperate climates are almost universally borne on trees or woody shrubs or liana - The Family Rosaceae dominates the temperate fruits, both in numbers and in importance - In non-technical usage, berry means any small fruit that can be eaten whole and lacks objectionable seeds - Some fruits native to Asia or of Asian Origin.

Banana:

While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar 'Cavendish' (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10-20 years - Most bananas grown worldwide are used for local consumption. In the tropics, bananas, especially cooking bananas, represent a major source of food, as well as a major source of income for smallholder farmers - There are two forms of banana allergy - The banana plant has long been a source of fibre for high quality textiles. In Japan, the cultivation of banana for clothing and household use dates back to at least the 13th century - Banana fibre is also used in the production of banana paper.

Growing apples. Maturation and harvest

Cultivars vary in their yield and the ultimate size of the tree, even when grown on the same rootstock. Some cultivars, if left unpruned, will grow very large, which allows them to bear a great deal more fruit, but makes harvest very difficult. Mature trees typically bear 40-200 kg of apples each year, though productivity can be close to zero in poor years. Apples are harvested using three-point ladders that are designed to fit amongst the branches. Dwarf trees will bear about 10-80 kg of fruit per year.

_____

Fruit:

Here are lists of fruits considered edible in some cuisines - Fruits of temperate climates are almost universally borne on trees or woody shrubs or liana - The Family Rosaceae dominates the temperate fruits, both in numbers and in importance - In non-technical usage, berry means any small fruit that can be eaten whole and lacks objectionable seeds - Some fruits native to Asia or of Asian Origin.

Banana:

While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar 'Cavendish' (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10-20 years - Most bananas grown worldwide are used for local consumption. In the tropics, bananas, especially cooking bananas, represent a major source of food, as well as a major source of income for smallholder farmers - There are two forms of banana allergy - The banana plant has long been a source of fibre for high quality textiles. In Japan, the cultivation of banana for clothing and household use dates back to at least the 13th century - Banana fibre is also used in the production of banana paper.

Growing apples. Pollination

Apples are self-incompatible; they must cross-pollinate to develop fruit. During the flowering each season, apple growers usually provide pollinators to carry the pollen. Honeybee hives are most commonly used. Orchard mason bees are also used as supplemental pollinators in commercial orchards. Bumble bee queens are sometimes present in orchards, but not usually in enough quantity to be significant pollinators.

There are four to seven pollination groups in apples depending on climate:
Group A – Early flowering, May 1 to 3 in England (Gravenstein, Red Astrachan)
Group B – May 4 to 7 (Idared, McIntosh)
Group C – Mid-season flowering, May 8 to 11 (Granny Smith, Cox's Orange Pippin)
Group D – Mid/Late season flowering, May 12 to 15 (Golden Delicious, Calville Blanc d'Hiver).
Group E – Late flowering, May 16 to 18 (Braeburn, Reinette d'Orléans)
Group F – May 19 to 23 (Suntan)
Group G – May 24 to 28 (Court Pendu Plat)

One cultivar can be pollinized by a compatible cultivar from the same group or close (A with A or A with B but not A with C or D).

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Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Banana:

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce the commonly eaten fruit - The banana plant is a pseudostem that grows to 6 to 7.6 metres (20-25 feet) tall, growing from a corm - Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple and red - Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries - The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Growing apples. Apple breeding

Like most perennial fruits, apples ordinarily propagate asexually by grafting. Seedling apples are different from their parents, sometimes radically. Most new apple cultivars originate as seedlings, which either arise by chance or are bred by deliberately crossing cultivars with promising characteristics. The words 'seedling', 'pippin', and 'kernel' in the name of an apple cultivar suggest that it originated as a seedling. Apples can also form bud sports (mutations on a single branch). Some bud sports turn out to be improved strains of the parent cultivar. Some differ sufficiently from the parent tree to be considered new cultivars.

Some breeders have crossed ordinary apples with crabapples or unusually hardy apples in order to produce hardier cultivars. For example, the Excelsior Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota has, since the 1930s, introduced a steady progression of important hardy apples that are widely grown, both commercially and by backyard orchardists, throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Its most important introductions have included 'Haralson' (which is the most widely cultivated apple in Minnesota), 'Wealthy', 'Honeygold', and 'Honeycrisp'.

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Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Banana:

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce the commonly eaten fruit - The banana plant is a pseudostem that grows to 6 to 7.6 metres (20-25 feet) tall, growing from a corm - Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple and red - Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries - The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Apple cultivars

There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples. Different cultivars are available for temperate and subtropical climates. Reputedly the world's biggest collection of apple cultivars is housed at the National Fruit Collection in England. Apples do not flower in tropical climates because they have a chilling requirement.

Commercially popular apple cultivars are soft but crisp. Other desired qualities in modern commercial apple breeding are a colourful skin, absence of russeting, ease of shipping, lengthy storage ability, high yields, disease resistance, typical "Red Delicious" apple shape, long stem (to allow pesticides to penetrate the top of the fruit), and popular flavour. The taste of the apple doesn't depend on the color. If the apple is bright red it could still taste bad.

Old cultivars are often oddly shaped, russeted, and have a variety of textures and colours. Many of them have excellent flavour (often better than most modern cultivars), but may have other problems which make them commercially unviable, such as low yield, liability to disease, or poor tolerance for storage or transport. A few old cultivars are still produced on a large scale, but many have been kept alive by home gardeners and farmers that sell directly to local markets. Many unusual and locally important cultivars with their own unique taste and appearance are out there to discover; apple conservation campaigns have sprung up around the world to preserve such local cultivars from extinction. In the United Kingdom old cultivars such as Cox's Orange Pippin and Egremont Russett are still commercially important even though by modern standards they are low yielding and disease prone.

Although most cultivars are bred for eating fresh (dessert apples), some are cultivated specifically for cooking (cooking apples) or producing cider. Cider apples are typically too tart and astringent to eat fresh, but they give the beverage a rich flavour that dessert apples cannot.

Modern apples are, as a rule, sweeter than older cultivars. Most North Americans and Europeans favour sweet, subacid apples, but tart apples have a strong minority following. Extremely sweet apples with barely any acid flavour are popular in Asia and especially India.

Tastes in apples vary from one person to another and change continually over time. As an example, the U.S. state of Washington made its reputation for apple growing on Red Delicious. In recent years, many apple connoisseurs have come to regard the Red Delicious as inferior to cultivars such as Fuji and Gala due to its merely mild flavour and insufficiently firm texture.

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Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Banana:

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce the commonly eaten fruit - The banana plant is a pseudostem that grows to 6 to 7.6 metres (20-25 feet) tall, growing from a corm - Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple and red - Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries - The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Botanical information

The wild ancestor of Malus domestica is Malus sieversii. It has no common name in English, but is known in Kazakhstan, where it is native, as 'alma'; in fact, the region where it is thought to originate is called Alma-Ata, or 'father of the apples'. This tree is still found wild in the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Xinjiang, China.

For many years, there was a debate about whether M. domestica evolved from chance hybridisation among various wild species. Recent DNA analysis by Barrie Juniper, Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University and others, has indicated, however, that the hybridisation theory is probably false. Instead, it appears that a single species still growing in the Ili Valley on the northern slopes of the Tien Shan mountains at the border of northwest China and the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan is the progenitor of the apples we eat today. Leaves taken from trees in this area were analyzed for DNA composition, which showed them all to belong to the species M. sieversii, with some genetic sequences common to M. domestica.

Some individual M. sieversii, recently planted by the US government at a research facility, resist many diseases and pests that affect domestic apples, and are the subject of continuing research to develop new disease-resistant apples.

Other species that were previously thought to have made contributions to the genome of the domestic apples are Malus baccata and Malus sylvestris, but there is no hard evidence for this in older apple cultivars. These and other Malus species have been used in some recent breeding programmes to develop apples suitable for growing in climates unsuitable for M. domestica, mainly for increased cold tolerance.

The apple tree was perhaps the earliest tree to be cultivated, and apples have remained an important food in all cooler climates. To a greater degree than other tree fruit, except possibly citrus, apples store for months while still retaining much of their nutritive value. Winter apples, picked in late autumn and stored just above freezing, have been an important food in Asia and Europe for millennia, as well as in Argentina and in the United States since the arrival of Europeans.

___________

Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Banana:

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce the commonly eaten fruit - The banana plant is a pseudostem that grows to 6 to 7.6 metres (20-25 feet) tall, growing from a corm - Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple and red - Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries - The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.