The Geography of Fruits PART 2

so I took a look back and found that it was over a year ago that I made the geography of fruit since making that video it's garnered over 1.6 million views and so many comments about all of the fruits I missed that it's only right to provide an update so what better time could there be for revisiting an old classic and learning the geography of lesser-known fruit okay so by the end of the first geography of fruit video we found that most fruits originated from only a few select areas this is to be expected as the variety of native crops always ties back to the biodiversity of an area which naturally means that the tropics are where we'll find more unique fruits than anywhere else the first place humans started growing and cultivating their own domesticated fruit breeds was of course where civilization itself got its start Mesopotamia as a result of the fruits originating here remain some of the most popular in the world so popular in fact that I already mentioned all of the common fruits originating here in the first video but for consistency's sake apricots cantaloupe dates figs grapes and pomegranates all got their start here if you want more info on those you should go back and watch the first video if you do that then you'll see that I only brought up three fruits from all of Africa clementines honeydew and watermelons but this largely ignored of tropical Africa where fruits like tamarind aqui guano and calabash are to be found tamarind is the only species in its genus meaning that it's incredibly hard to find something to compare it to if you've never tasted it before the Arabians who named the fruit really should have watched this video though as the name tamarind translates from arabic into indian date as by the time they encountered the fruit it had already made its way to india which remains the number one producer today Aki is one of the more confusing fruits to look at but that's a good thing you see when the fruits aren't fully ripe they might look more appealing but they still contain Oh glycine toxins which can cause a condition known as Jamaican vomiting sickness so you're better off waiting for the fruit to yawn or smile making it easier to remove the seeds and safe to eat despite its exotic nature Kawano might actually look familiar to a lot of you watching don't worry it took me a while to realize it too but this is the fruit that you'll see on all of those clickbait ads saying they're the cure for being overweight kiwano are in fact not the cure for being overweight nothing is but at the very least it wouldn't be bad for you to eat more fruit calabash however is by far the most useful of the African fruits while you can eat it if you want most people end up hollowing out the fruit and using the tough exterior as a container that's how the calabash earned its nickname the bottle gourd although people have also used them to make bowls utensils Pat's and helmets and de literally so many different types of instruments lacking the same level of biodiversity as other tropical regions however Africa remains a smaller fruit producing hotspot and while the calabash certainly is an impressive gourd our next fruit hotspot mesoamerica has it beat here the mini early civilizations of the region widely cultivated the Cucurbita genus diversifying into five different species collectively known as squash while yes these are typically prepared and eaten more like vegetables than fruit they still harbor seeds deep within them making pumpkins zucchini and all the rest of the genus technically count as fruits now being the home of an entire genus would be impressive in its own right but squash wasn't the only genus cultivated by the Maya and Aztec these people also proliferated the capsicum genus but most of us would call capsicum fruits by a different name peppers yes these are fruits too and include the bell pepper chili pepper jalapeno cayenne and habanero to name a few while most of us enjoy fruits for their sweet flavour this definitely is not the case year instead capsicum fruits store of the chemical known as capsaicin in what's known as the pith or the white fleshy part surrounding the seeds this chemical is what makes peppers spicy to us mammals as we were never the intended consumer of these fruits birds on the other hand can eat peppers no problem allowing them to disperse pepper seeds much better than any mammal ever could if Squasher peppers aren't your thing Mesoamerica still has plenty of sweets to offer in the first video I mentioned that this is where avocados guavas and papayas originated but besides those we also have maman seal tomatillo Safavieh and Terra Moya which despite their names aren't all that related to one another I've actually tried maman CO or Spanish lime which is mostly just a big seed with a little flesh surrounding it to eat it you need to put the whole thing in your mouth position it with your tongue and scrape the fruity part off with your bottom front teeth spitting the seed out once you're done I honestly can't remember how it tastes though all I remember is how slimy it was oma Theo's are two Tomatoes what green apples are two red apples where the tomato is juicy and a little sweet deep dama Theo is more tart but when all is said and done both end up in their respective salsas lastly for Mesoamerica we have the pitaya or what happens when you let a cactus grow its own fruit for this the fruit has an exceptionally strange-looking body which served as the inspiration for its english name dragon fruit however once Mesoamerica reaches South America were entering the realm of the Amazon and while it would be easy enough to say that all of the upcoming fruit originated within the rainforest here these hotspots aren't only about where fruiting plants grow but also where populations of people existed to domesticate them the first hotspot evolved as the Amazonian fruits traveled west into the Andes region where it was the Inca who grew and bred wild fruits into the ones we would recognize today the most popular Incan fruit feed tomato was mentioned in the last video but that's not where the story ends next we have B closely related tomatillo which yes is different from both of the tomato and the tomatillo and earns the distinction of being another very exotic fruit that I've gotten to try while the name might be misleading Cape gooseberries or just golden berries are another tomato relative found here and cutting them open we can see these berries reveal a fruiting structure very similar to the rest of the tomato family further east we'll find fun Pinal the largest tropical wetland in the world and it's in this region that the gluttony and 2p people cultivated their own unique fruits along the banks of the Paraguay and piranha rivers mentioned already was the pineapple and passion fruit but that's not all that should come as no surprise that the Guarani people are responsible for the iguana which remains one of brazil's best kept secrets considering its seeds contain twice the concentration of caffeine as coffee seeds to making it a very popular flavor and ingredient in south american sodas and especially energy drinks and when extracted from the fruit the Iguana seeds closely resembled the acai berry as well as the jabuticaba both of which are also native to this and surrounding regions like a Kawano acai is another fruit taken advantage of by the quote unquote health industry people have gone so far as to call this a superfood when in reality these berries contain the same basic antioxidants fiber or whatever health buzzword is popular as any other berry don't get me wrong even fruit in general is still good for you it's just not going to cure cancer it's at this point that we need to move over to Asia which unsurprisingly serves as the greatest cultivator of fruit in the world in the solar system and I guess in the galaxy while there are numerous smaller hotspots for fruit like Central Asia where the apple pear and peach all originated the greatest concentrations of fruits came out of the ancient Southeast Asian rainforest so much so in fact that it spawned three separate hotspots in the last video we learned that Asia and particularly south-central China through Vietnam saw the evolution of Kiwis and kumquats and to this list I'd like to add like key loquats & Langan all of which are about the same size which is to say pretty small the largest of the bunch when it comes to China are the Mandarin and persimmon both of which while definitely bigger than the rest still pale in comparison to the fruits found further south if you're looking for big fruits Indonesia and specifically Peninsular Malaysia Sumatra and Borneo has you covered it's here where durian and Halle fruits were first cultivated though if you want really big fruit you should have paid more attention to those pumpkins larger than the fruit itself the odour given off by durian is famously horrible to the point where some places won't even let you carry one with you the Indonesian islands of course also feature a wide selection of smaller fruits such as rambutan Poulos and Salah and mangosteen rambutan and poulos an if you couldn't tell are closely related and are basically the crazy cousins of the likee and longan Salak similar to who the dragon fruit has its scaly appearance to thank for its more common English name snake fruit lastly in the previous video I mentioned the pomelo originated here what I didn't mention was that the pomelo was one of the original citrus fruits which is actually a pretty big deal you see despite being one of the most popular fruit groups the citrus family only has three original ancestors the pomelo the Mandarin and the Citroen together it was different combinations of these three fruits that yielded even more popular ones such as oranges blood oranges tangerines lemons limes grapefruits all the way to Buddha's hand which is really nothing more than a strangely shaped Citroen this finally brings us to India besides the Citroen there are a number of other cool fruits to talk about here like the jackfruit the largest of any tree grown fruit the cucumber mulberry lacouture they have wood apples which I'm not sure how you're supposed to eat but what apple juice doesn't look so bad and it's even here in India known as the Korean melon originated despite the name but I'd like to save most of my time in India to talk about it's a single greatest fruit you see in my first video I did in fact mention this fruit just extremely briefly which has since led to non-stop posts asking about it in the comments the fruit in question is of course the mango to give you a picture of how much the people of this subcontinent enjoy the mango if all of these hundreds of comments weren't already enough India of course is the world's top producer harvesting over four times as many mangoes as the next to top producer China and I don't think it's possible to produce four times more than China of anything without truly loving it however the most popular commercial mango mostly due to its long shelf life rather than its taste is a cultivar known as Tommy Atkins which doesn't sound very Indian that's because it was all the way over here in Florida that this strain was first produced while some might find this surprising it makes sense not only does Florida sit at the same latitude as most of India but the United States as a whole has a rich history of developing new fruits I learned this a couple years ago when a friend of mine showed me a juice made from what's called loganberry years later when I looked for every list of exotic fruit I could find on the internet loganberry was never mentioned and eventually I had to research it myself what I found was that loganberry was invented in Santa Cruz California by someone unsurprisingly named James Harvey Logan the new berry was the result of a cross between the European originating blackberry and raspberry and then it was loganberry crossed with more blackberries raspberries and even something called a do berry that what's known as boysenberry was created this time by Rudolph poison again in California in 1992 the california-based company Calgene got approval for the very first a genetically engineered food to ever hit consumer shelves the flavor saver tomato since then more and more have gained approval and despite the ethics of genetic modification this presents a brand new means of fruit creation looking towards the future we might see the emergence of new fruit cultivation hotspots this time not based off the local biodiversity but rather the local brainpower hey everyone I hope you enjoyed and saw any fruit you were hoping to see did I do a good job or there's still some missing of course let me know in the comments also let me know how you liked the new map and if you want a flattened version of this map with all the fruits on it head over to my Twitter I've got a lot of great videos planned with this so if you want to make sure you see those don't be scared to subscribe and maybe even venture over to my patreon like all of these con people going by on-screen to support what I do here thanks [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 271,162

Rating: 4.9510403 out of 5

Keywords: education, geography, science, atlaspro, fruit, mango, durian, exotic, tropical, mexico, india, africa, amazon

Id: MOG1sK2_SaI

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020