Lychee sweet, tangerine sour, sweet and sour are grapes, and each fruit has its own unique taste, but this seems to have been a long time ago.
Now go to the market to buy fruits, whether it's watermelons, oranges, or grapes, all kinds of fruits are dominated by one word: sweet. Of course, the market is also about catering to the needs of customers, and who doesn't want to eat sweet fruits? Sweetness is a code engraved in human genes. But the question is, when did the taste of the fruit start to change? How has it changed? In fact, the evolution of fruits to "pure sweet wind" has not been long, only more than ten years.
There are two indicators that determine whether a fruit is sweet or sour, one is the sugar content, and the other is the sugar-acid ratio.
In 2009, the sugar content of 7 varieties of watermelon was tested, and the average sugar content of the variety with the highest sugar content was 98% and the lowest is 69%, of which the highest sugar content is the watermelon heart, which is 114%。Twelve years later, in 2021, people conducted another sugar content test on watermelon, and all common watermelon varieties, including unicorn melon, have an average sugar content of more than 9%, and the sweetest variety "Quanmei 2K" has a sugar content of 135%, even the green and white watermelon edges, the sugar content is 116%。No wonder eating watermelon has the feeling of drinking sugar water.
It can be seen that it is not an illusion that watermelons have become sweetened, and it is not only watermelons that have become sweetened, almost all fruits have become sweetened.
It's an interesting thing, how did people fundamentally change the sweetness of these fruits in just a dozen years? All the fruits we grow now are gradually domesticated from wild fruits, and the sweetness of wild fruits is far from being comparable to the fruits grown now. In the case of apples, wild apples contain more than 60 times more citric acid than modern apples. In the long process of civilization development, human beings continue to breed more high-quality seeds for planting, and little by little they have today's results.
Of course, it takes a long time to change the taste of the fruit by breeding, and it is absolutely impossible to completely change the taste of the fruit in more than ten years.
However, now human beings have the blessing of science and technology, cross breeding, gene editing, these means have greatly accelerated the cultivation of fruits, so when people's demand for sweet fruits is highlighted, soon the taste of fruits began to change in this direction. However, just by changing the genes of fruits, it is not possible to create fruits with high sweetness, because genes only determine the upper limit of fruit sweetness, and how to achieve this upper limit has to work hard in the planting process.
In order to cultivate high sweetness of fruits, it is necessary to adopt modern fine cultivation management, from sowing, watering, to fertilization, one step can not be sloppy, only the yield but not the quality of the extensive planting method can not grow high sweet fruits.
As we all know, light is very important for the sweetness of fruits, so in order to further improve the sweetness of some fruits, the fill light will be turned on in the orchard at night, and the light time will be extended, and the sweetness of the fruit will be improved. In addition to these, new research has also contributed to the sweetness of fruits, such as the discovery that applying a sucrose solution to leaves can effectively improve the sweetness of lychee, longan and mango.
In fact, the fruits are not only getting sweeter and sweeter, but also have an interesting phenomenon, that is, the sweetness of a fruit is linked to the ** straight line of this fruit, and it is very accurate.
This is because now infrared spectroscopy sugar detection technology has been widely used in the process of fruit picking and grading, people can achieve non-destructive sugar measurement of fruits, so fruits with high sweetness and fruits with low sweetness may be separated and sold separately. But then again, the fruit is only sweet, in fact, there is no meaning, now some people hope that the fruit can return to the sweet and sour taste, in fact, with the blessing of modern technology, this is not a problem, as long as there is demand, over time will be able to produce the corresponding taste of fruit.