A berry is a small, pulpy, and often edible fruit. Typically, berries are juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet, sour or tart, and do not have a stone or pit, although many pips or seeds may be present. Common examples of berries in the culinary sense are strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, white currants, blackcurrants, and redcurrants. In Britain, soft fruit is a horticultural term for such fruits.
Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. There are more than 20 described species and many hybrids and cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the garden strawberry, a hybrid known as Fragaria × ananassa. Strawberries have a taste that varies by cultivar, and ranges from quite sweet to rather tart. Strawberries are an important commercial fruit crop, widely grown in all temperate regions of the world.
Vitis rotundifolia, or muscadine, is a grapevine species native to the southeastern and south-central United States. The growth range extends from Florida to New Jersey coast, and west to eastern Texas and Oklahoma. It has been extensively cultivated since the 16th century. The plants are well-adapted to their native warm and humid climate; they need fewer chilling hours than better known varieties, and thrive in summer heat.
The loganberry is a hybrid of the North American blackberry and the European raspberry.
The garden strawberry is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus Fragaria, collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely appreciated for its characteristic aroma, bright red color, juicy texture, and sweetness. It is consumed in large quantities, either fresh or in such prepared foods as jam, juice, pies, ice cream, milkshakes, and chocolates. Artificial strawberry flavorings and aromas are also widely used in products such as candy, soap, lip gloss, perfume, and many others.
Fragaria virginiana, known as Virginia strawberry, wild strawberry, common strawberry, or mountain strawberry, is a North American strawberry that grows across much of the United States and southern Canada. It is one of the two species of wild strawberry that were hybridized to create the modern domesticated garden strawberry.
The musk strawberry or hautbois strawberry, is a species of strawberry native to Europe. Its French name hautbois strawberry may be anglicised as hautboy strawberry. The plants are hardy and can survive in many weather conditions. They are cultivated commercially on a small scale, particularly in Italy. The fruit are small and round; they are used in the gourmet community for their intense aroma and flavour, which has been compared to a mixture of regular strawberry, raspberry and pineapple. Popular cultivated varieties include 'Capron' and 'Profumata di Tortona'.
Fragaria vesca, commonly called the wild strawberry, woodland strawberry, Alpine strawberry, Carpathian strawberry or European strawberry, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, and that produces edible fruits.
Fragaria × vescana is a hybrid strawberry cultivar that was created in an effort to combine the best traits of the garden strawberry, which has large berries and vigorous plants, with the woodland strawberry, which has an exquisite flavour, but small berries.
Fragaria chiloensis, the beach strawberry, Chilean strawberry, or coastal strawberry, is one of two species of wild strawberry that were hybridized to create the modern garden strawberry. It is native to the Pacific Ocean coasts of North and South America.
Fragaria daltoniana is a species of flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is a strawberry native to the Himalayas. Its fruit has a poor flavor, and is of no commercial value.
There are several commercially important hybrids between Fragaria and Comarum species in existence. A name for Fragaria × Comarum is available as × Comagaria Büscher & G.H. Loos in Veroff. [Bohumer Bot. Ver. 2(1): 6. 2010], along with the combination × Comagaria rosea (Mabb.) Büscher & G.H. Loos.
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant Solanum lycopersicum, commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Nahuatl word tomatl gave rise to the Spanish word tomate, from which the English word tomato derives. Its domestication and use as a cultivated food may have originated with the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The Aztecs used tomatoes in their cooking at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and after the Spanish encountered the tomato for the first time after their contact with the Aztecs, they brought the plant to Europe, in a widespread transfer of plants known as the Columbian exchange. From there, the tomato was introduced to other parts of the European-colonized world during the 16th century.
The Marshall strawberry is a cultivated variety of Fragaria ananassa, that is known for an "exceptional" taste and had been described as "the finest eating strawberry" in America.
Pineberry is a white strawberry cultivar with red seeds and a pineapple-like flavor.
The Strasberry or Fragaria × ananassa 'Mieze Schindler' is a variety of the garden strawberry, with a raspberry-like appearance, originally developed by the German breeder Otto Schindler in 1925. It is similarly soft textured, with characteristics that are similar to raspberries, such as being a deeper red, being rounder and having a bumpy exterior. They are also smaller than an average garden strawberry and have deeper achenes. Unlike other garden strawberry varieties, 'Mieze Schindler' produces no fertile pollen and will need a pollinator. Despite its much-valued flavor, the variety was threatened by extinction, but plants survived in amateur gardens in the former German Democratic Republic until they were reintroduced as a commercial variety by a Dutch farmer in the twenty-first century. Since 2013 a hybrid, self-pollinating version of this strawberry has been marketed under the new trade name Framberry.
The breeding of strawberries started with the selection and cultivation of European strawberry species in western Europe in the 15th century while a similar discovery and cultivation occurred in Chile. The most commonly consumed strawberry species in modern times is the garden strawberry, a species derived from hybridization of two other species, with the scientific name Fragaria × ananassa, but there are many species of strawberries, several others of which are cultivated to some extent. The strawberry species fall into several different genetic types, based on their number of chromosomes. Strawberry growers have employed many breeding techniques, starting with traditional plant breeding and then moving on to molecular breeding and genetic engineering in the 20th century.
Albert Etter (1872–1950) was an American plant breeder best known for his work on strawberry and apple varieties.
Strawberries in the United States are almost entirely grown in California – 86% of fresh and 98% of frozen in 2017 – with Florida a distant second. Of that 30.0% was from Monterey, 28.6% from Ventura, 20.0% from Santa Barbara, 10.0% from San Luis Obispo, and 9.2% from Santa Cruz. The Watsonville/Salinas strawberry zone in Santa Cruz/Monterey, and the Oxnard zone in Ventura, contribute heavily to those concentrations.
