Dried fruit is a
fruitthat has been dried, either naturally or artificially by a machine, such as a dehydrator.Examples of dried fruits are Raisins,
Plumsor Prunes and Dates. Apples,
Apricots, Bananas, Cranberries, Figs,
Mangoes, PawPaw, Peaches, Pineapples,
Pears and Tomatoes are the other dried fruits. A good dried fruit has a long shelf life and therefore it can be used as a good alternate to fresh fruit, which allows out of the season fruits to be available. Drying is a very well-known way to preserve fruit
when there is no refrigerator. Dried fruit is mostly used in baking mixes, breakfast cereals and making cake. Dried fruit is a healthy snack and since the public is ready to pay more for the snacks than staples, the quality is improving all the time.
Indehiscent Dry Fruits
The caryopsis is widely called as a grain.A very small, one-seeded dry, indehiscent fruit in which the actual seed coat is completely merged to the pericarp.The outer layer of pericarp or husk is referred to as the bran, while the inner, seed layer is referred as the germ.Caryopsis is the featured fruit of the large grass family . This is truly a fruit and not a seed because it came from a ripened ovary inside the grass inflorescence.Corn (maize), wheat, rice, rye, barley, oats, Johnson grass, Bermuda grass and many more species are the other examples of this type.In corn grains, the major white material that bursts when the grains are heated is endosperm tissue within the seed.Grain type fruits are generated by members of the grass family which comprises main food crops such as rice, corn and wheat.
Dehiscent Dry Fruits
It develops from a single carpel and therefore seed(s) are in one locule. The fruits produced in Columbine and milkweed plants are known as a follicle. Magnolia is an example of follicle fruit.The Follicle fruit develops from a single ripened ovary and split only once to release their seeds in to the environment.The discharging seeds is always along. Follicles may occur individually, example - milkweed.When the fruit splits it looks like a dry leaf and that carpels are modified and the leaves first produce spores, then gametes and finally seeds.The cone-like magnolia tree fruit is an aggregate of many small follicles, each has single bright red seed.The term apocarpous refers to flowers that has separate and distinct carpels, such as delphiniums and columbines of the buttercup family.
The achene contains a single seed that stick to the wall of the ovary. Seed coat is not merged with ovary wall.The matured ovary wall is thin and immature, so when it dries, the fruit will developed as a seed-like appearance.Sunflowers,dandelions are examples for achenes.Buttercup and buckwheat fruits are the typical achenes.Sunflower "seed" is not a seed actually a fruit. They are tiny and one-seeded fruit, generally produced in clusters.At maturity the pericarp is dry and not attached to the internal seed, except at the placental attachment.An achene is a type of simple dry fruit that is developed by many species of flowering plants sometimes called as akene, and rarely called as achenium or achenocarp.
The legume splits into two lines of dehiscence subsequent to maturation and drying.The legume fruits are derived from a simple ovary that has one carpel with two rows of ovules.Peas, beans and peanuts are the examples of legume type. A peanut is not a nut, it is one of the indehiscent legumes that will not split open when ripe.This is possibly because the peanut fruit is produced in the soil rather than in the air.A legume is a plant or a fruit in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae)."Pod" is the common name for this type of fruit, even though pod is also applied to a few other fruit types.
Nuts are same in structure as like achene and the ovary wall is tough and woody. The shell of this nut covers as the coat for fruit. The coat is developed from the ovary wall after fertilization.Some nuts have a husk that covers the hard shell. The husk is developed from the outer layer of the ovary wall and the hard coat from the inner layer of the ovary wall.The examples of this type of nuts as follows.(1) Acorn of oak (Quercus): The actual nut lays in a cup-shaped involucre of imbricate (overlapping) scales.(2) Chestnut (Castanea), beech (Fagus) & chinquapin (Castanopsis): One or more nuts lies in a spiny, cup-shaped involucre.(3) Hazelnut or filbert (Corylus): Nut that is in a leafy (C. americana) or tubular (C. cornuta) involucre.4) Walnut (Juglans) and pecan (Carya) are grouped in the drupe category above, although some botanists maintain that they are true nuts.The outer green layer (husk) of the walnut is part of the pericarp and the hard shell that surrounding the seed is truely the endocarp.
The capsule is also a type of dry dehiscent fruit.The capsule is composed of more than one carpel. For example, lily fruits split length-wise into several sections corresponding to the number of carpels.The Sweet Gum fruit which is a cluster of capsules discharge winged seeds as each ovary splits open at maturity.A capsule is composed of two or more carpels, which splits apart (dehisce) to release the seeds, at maturity.In some capsules, the split happens between carpels, and in others each carpel splits open.In some others, seeds are discharged through openings or pores that form in the capsule.In the Brazil nut, a lid on the capsule opens, but it is very small to discharge the dozen of seeds within.These germinate within the capsule after it falls to the ground.Cotton (Gossypium), Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus), Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), Jimson Weed (Datura), Mahogany (Afzelia), Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) are the plants that have capsule type fruit.
A samara is a simple dry fruit in which a flattened "wing" of fibrous, papery tissue is produced from the ovary wall.A samara is bicarpellate (two carpels) and indehiscent (not opening along a seam) type.The shape of a samara allows the wind to carry the seed from the parent tree.A special form of samara is sometimes called a key, where the papery sheath widens far out to one side so that the seed spirals as it falls.Trees with the extended keys include the maples (genus Acer) and the ashes (genus Fraxinus).The Samara is a wind borne fruit that contains single seed. It is much similar to achene except for the paper-like wing which is produdec from the ovary wall of the flower.Samaras is similar to the winged seeds of a pine, but they are one-seeded fruits with a pericarp layer surrounding the seed.The leguminous tipu tree (Tipuana tipu) contains a winged fruit certainly looks like a samara, although it belongs to the legume family (Leguminosae or Fabaceae).Ash, elm are the examples of this type.
