Ripening

Fruit ripeness refers to the maturity or degree of maturity of fruits as the totality of the organs that emerge from a flower. The term is used in particular for fruits and vegetables, but also derivatively. A distinction is also made between:

• Picking ripeness: ripeness stage at which the fruit must be harvested in order to avoid disease or impairment of quality (e.g. drop marks, stippling in apples, loss of flavor) or because they can be stored longer (e.g. apples) or transported better (e.g. bananas) in the unripe state.
• Ripeness for eating: results from the period of ripening of the fruit, either on the tree or by post-ripening in storage; ripeness for eating may therefore coincide with picking ripeness, but may also occur months later in the case of fruit in storage, for example. Ripeness for consumption sometimes requires enzymatic degradation of tannins or fruit acids after exposure to frost (e.g. in persimmon fruit, medlars or the Speierling). For apples, the term is now largely obsolete: in the past, late or storage varieties were not harvested fully ripe and a ripeness for consumption was indicated for weeks or months later. Since the advent of modern fruit warehouses, such early harvesting is rarely practiced in commercial fruit growing. All these varieties can also be left to ripen on the tree, making them edible immediately after harvest.
• Market maturity: This is determined primarily by demand. If the market is undersupplied, less mature fruits and vegetables can be traded under certain conditions. These are then less mature (for example, the demand for small cucumbers to produce pickles, meanwhile cucumber plants have been selected to yield high numbers). "Maturity is reached when the market demands the commodity."
• Overripe: Some of the fruits have already started to rot and are hardly fit for transport and consumption.

Processed foods know other maturity terms, for example, in the case of wine, drinking maturity.

See also

• Biological effect of ethene
• Climacteric (Botany)
• Fructification
• Maturation (food)