|
|
Fruit and vegetables
|
| September 15, 2002. |
Fruit represent an important part
of most housewives' shopping lists when they visit the
outdoor markets or supermarkets. It is a very common
sight to see limes next to tomatoes, avocadoes among
the oranges and watermelons, or mangoes and bananas
sharing the same space.
Nevertheless all the fruit did not
always share the same territorial distribution. It was
thanks to merchants, explorers and conquistadors, that
they managed to colonize other countries and seduce
the most demanding palates of millions of people around
the world.
Apart from the foregoing, the ample
distribution achieved by fruit was attained thanks to
its domestication, which occurred with man evolved from
a primitive hunter-gatherer, a process that took place
somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago. Prior
to then, people surely spent a great part of their life
classifying plants that might be useful to them according
to their flavor and texture; and it is quite probable
that many perished as a result of eating toxic fruit.
Today, human societies have invested
their genius, patience and money in causing plants and
their fruit to grow and produce much more than what
they would normally be able to do. On one part, they
have applied fertilizers to accelerate growth, pesticides
to eradicate the attack of plagues and even used the
controversial genetically modified transgenetic organisms.
I will not deal with the topic of
agriculture on this occasion nor with the highly fashionable
transgenetic foods. Rather, I will deal with the strange
interaction and convergence of fruit from different
parts of the world in the fruit and vegetable sections
of modern supermarkets.
We start with the avocado, an essential
element in Mexican food, but a costly whim if you want
to buy it in an American supermarket. The avocado originated
in the tropical mountain forests of tropical America.
The name comes from the Aztec word "ahuacatl"
that refers to the shape of the fruit which resembles
a testicle. We know that its cultivation began some
8,000 years ago.
For its part, the pineapple first
grew in the tropical regions of Brazil. It has been
cultivated for many years but it was not until the arrival
of the Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors that the
first varieties were developed. They were the ones who
introduced the peoples of the Old World to the fruit's
exquisite flavor. We had to wait until the year 1513
for someone to make a drawing of a pineapple, which
was then sent by Oviedo to King Fernando of Spain. Likewise,
in 1548, intense cultivation of the pineapple began
on the isle of Madagascar and in India in 1590. From
there on, its production extended to all the tropical
areas of the planet.
The mango is one of the most important
fruit of the tropics when compared in magnitude to the
cultivation of apples in temperate zones. Its origins
have been established in the heart of Burma (called
Myanmar today) and the foothills of the Himalayas in
eastern India. Its domestication occurred in the latter
country some 4,000 years ago. During their explorations,
the Portuguese introduced the mango tree from western
Africa to Brazil, while the Spaniards transported the
seeds from the Philippines to Mexico.
Finally, we get to the orange, born
in China. There are reports attesting to the fact that
its cultivation developed in that region of the world
2,000 years before the birth of Christ. Oranges were
grown in Europe during the Baroque period, between 1600
and 1750. Another Chinese citrus fruit is the lime whose
use dates back to the year 500 B.C. It was introduced
in Europe somewhere between the years 1000 and 1200.
cupul@pvmirror.com
Archives
by date
|
Current
Weather Report
