Grape, Grape

Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil.

As more settlers came to California, more and more varieties of European grapes were introduced, some for wine-making, others for raisins and some for eating fresh.

Mutations in two regulatory genes of white grapes turn off production of anthocyanins which are responsible for the color of red grapes.

Approximately 71% of world grape production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit, and 2% as dried fruit. A portion of grape production goes to producing grape juice to be reconstituted for fruits canned "with no added sugar" and "100% natural". The area dedicated to vineyards is increasing by about 2% per year.

Because grapevines are vegetatively propagated by cuttings, the lack of seeds does not present a problem for reproduction. It is, however, an issue for breeders, who must either use a seeded variety as the female parent or rescue embryos early in development using tissue culture techniques.

There are currently more than a dozen varieties of seedless grapes. Several, such as Einset Seedless, Reliance and Venus, have been specifically cultivated for hardiness and quality in the relatively cold climates of north-eastern United States and southern Ontario. Reisch BI, Peterson DV, Martens M-H.

While raisin is a French loanword, the word in French refers to the fresh fruit; grappe (from which the English grape is derived) refers to the bunch (as in une grappe de raisins ).

Note also that currant has come to refer also to the blackcurrant and redcurrant, two berries unrelated to grapes.

LeBlanc, MR (2005). Cultivar, Juice Extraction, Ultra Violet Irradiation and Storage Influence the Stilbene Content of Muscadine Grapes (Vitis Rotundifolia Michx.). PhD Dissertation, Louisiana State University [5] Fresh grape skin contains about 50 to 100 micrograms of resveratrol per gram.

The amount of fermentation time a wine spends in contact with grape skins is an important determinant of its resveratrol content. [6] Ordinary non-muscadine red wine contains between 0.2 and 5.8 mg/L, depending on the grape variety, because it is fermented with the skins, allowing the wine to absorb the resveratrol. By contrast, a white wine contains lower phenolic contents because it is fermented after removal of skins.

Grape seed oil is notable for its high contents of tocopherols (vitamin E), phytosterols, and polyunsaturated fatty acids such as linoleic acid, oleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid.

Source: Wikipedia > Grape