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Fruit Development, Maturation, and Ripening
William Grierson
University of Florida, Lake Alfred, Florida (retired)
143I. INTRODUCTION
A. What Is a Fruit?
The biblical phrase “the precious fruits of the earth” can be taken far more literally than the epistle writer
probably imagined. There is very little in agriculture that does not depend on the development of fruits.
By definition, a fruit is the end product of a matured ovary. This end product can vary from being a sin-
gle seed such as a grain of any cereal (e.g., wheat, rice, rye, oats, or barley) to being a fleshy, succulent
structure (e.g., peach, pear, or watermelon). All nut crops, including peanuts (or “ground nuts”), are tech-
nically fruits, as are the products of oil palm, coconuts, rape (canola), flax (linseed), and other plants
grown for extraction of edible or industrial oils. Even many root and pasture crops are dependent on fruit
setting to provide seed for sowing the next crop. Root and tuber crops grown from vegetative propagules
are an obvious exception, but their genetic improvement by plant breeders is dependent on flowering, pol-
lination, and fruit setting to provide seed with which to start improved varieties. It should also be noted
that many “vegetables,” including tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, squash, peppers (capsicums), egg-
plant (aubergine), and okra (lady’s fingers), are botanically fruits.
B. Scope of This Chapter
For the purposes of this chapter, only the products classified horticulturally as fruits are considered for
detailed discussion. In general, these are fleshy products, characteristically high in sugars (the avocado
being a notable exception) and although sometimes processed on a very large scale, traditionally eaten
raw as dessert. Unlike vegetables, most are perennials grown on trees, vines, or shrubs (strawberries are
the fruit of a perennial herbaceous plant). Melons are an exception, being annuals.
Whether annual or perennial, whether classified commercially as a fruit, vegetable, or cereal, it
should always be remembered that until the instant of harvesting, a fruit is an integral part of the parent
plant, participating in a common physiology and subject to the same ecological influences. As pointed out
in Chapter 2, a fruit cannot be considered independent of the growth status of the parent plant or of the
environment in which it was grown. A simpleminded quest for a single recommendation as to optimum
postharvest conditions for a given type of fruit, regardless of growing district and preharvest climatic con-
ditions, is doomed to failure.