Ingredient: Strawberries
Category: Fruit - Soft
Season: June and July.
The Garden strawberry (Fragaria ×ananassa and related cultivars) is the most common variety of strawberry cultivated worldwide.
Like other species of Fragaria (strawberries), it belongs to the family Rosaceae; its fruit is more technically known as an accessory fruit, in that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries (achenes), but from the peg at the bottom of the bowl-shaped hypanthium that holds the ovaries.
The Garden Strawberry was first bred in Europe in the early 18th century , and represents the accidental cross of Fragaria virginiana from eastern North America, which was noted for its fine flavor, and Fragaria chiloensis from Chile and noted for its large size.
Cultivars of Fragaria ×ananassa have replaced in commercial production the Woodland Strawberry , which was the first strawberry species cultivated in the early 17th century.
Strawberry varieties vary remarkably in size, colour, flavour, shape, degree of fertility, season of ripening, liability to disease and constitution of plant.
Some vary in foliage, and some vary materially in the relative development of their sexual organs. In most cases the flowers appear hermaphroditic in structure, but function as either male or female.
For purposes of commercial production, plants are propagated from runners and generally distributed as either bare root plants or plugs.
Cultivation follows one of two models;annual plasticulture or a perennial system of matted rows or mounds.
A small amount of strawberries are also produced in greenhouses during the off-season.
Uses
In addition to being consumed fresh, strawberries are frozen or made into preserves (jams).
Strawberries are a popular addition to dairy products, as in strawberry flavored ice cream , milkshakes and yogurts.
Strawberry pie is also popular .
British red, ripe strawberries are in quite a different league to the imported varieties that continue to turn up in the winter.
The typical modern strawberry, of the genus Fragaria, comes from the Americas, and is a hybrid of both North and South American varieties.
Interestingly, the crossbreeding was done in Europe to correct a mistake; the European horticulturists had only brought female South American plants, and were forced to cross them with the North American variety in order to get fruit and seeds.
There are more than 20 different Fragaria species worldwide.
The key to the classification of strawberry species is recognising that they vary in the number of chromosomes.
There are seven basic types of chromosomes that they all have in common. However, they exhibit different polyploidy.
Some species are diploid, having two sets of the seven chromosomes (14 chromosomes total).
Others are tetraploid (four sets, 28 chromosomes total)
hexaploid (six sets, 42 chromosomes total)
octoploid (eight sets, 56 chromosomes total)
decaploid (ten sets, 70 chromosomes total).
As a rough rule (with exceptions): Strawberry species with more chromosomes tend to be more robust and produce larger plants with larger berries (Darrow).
Diploid species:
Fragaria daltoniana;Fragaria iinumae; Fragaria nilgerrensis; Fragaria nipponica, Fragaria nubicola; Fragaria vesca (Woodland Strawberry); Fragaria viridis; Fragaria yezoensis.
Tetraploid species:
Fragaria moupinensis; Fragaria orientalis.
Hexaploid species:
Fragaria moschata (Musk Strawberry).
Octoploid species and hybrids:
Fragaria ×ananassa (Garden Strawberry);
Fragaria chiloensis (Beach Strawberry);
Fragaria iturupensis (Iturup Strawberry) ;
Fragaria virginiana (Virginia Strawberry).
Decaploid species and hybrids:
Fragaria ×Potentilla hybrids;
Fragaria ×vescana. |