The orange

 The orange originated in a region encompassing Southern China, Northeast India, and Myanmar; the earliest mention of the sweet orange was in Chinese literature in 314 BC. Orange trees are widely grown for their sweet fruit. The fruit of the orange tree can be eaten fresh or processed for its juice or fragrant peel. In 2022, 76 million tones of oranges were grown worldwide, with Brazil producing 22% of the total, followed by India and China.

Oranges have featured in human culture since ancient times. They first appear in Western art in the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, but they had been depicted in Chinese art centuries earlier, as in Zhao Lingrang's Song dynasty fan painting Yellow Oranges and Green Tangerines. By the 17th century, an orangery had become an item of prestige in Europe, as seen at the Versailles Orangerie. More recently, artists such as Vincent van Gogh, John Sloan, and Henri Matisse included oranges in their paintings.

Description

The orange tree is a relatively small evergreen, flowering tree, with an average height of 9 to 10 m (30 to 33 ft), although some very old specimens can reach 15 m (49 ft). Its oval leaves, which are alternately arranged, are 4 to 10 cm (1.6 to 3.9 in) long and have crenulate crenulate margins. Sweet oranges grow in a range of different sizes, and shapes varying from spherical to oblong. Inside and attached to the rind is a porous white tissue, the white, bitter mesocarp or albedo (pith). The orange contains a number of distinct carpels (segments or pigs, botanically the fruits) inside, typically about ten, each delimited by a membrane and containing many juice-filled vesicles and usually a few pips. When unripe, the fruit is green. The grainy irregular rind of the ripe fruit can range from bright orange to yellow orange, but frequently retains green patches or, under warm climate conditions, remains entirely green. Like all other citrus fruits, the sweet orange is non-climacteric, not ripening off the tree. The Citrus sinensis group is subdivided into four classes with distinct characteristics: common oranges, blood or pigmented oranges, navel oranges, and aidless oranges. The fruit is a hesperidium, a modified berry; it is covered by a rind formed by a rugged thickening of the ovary wall.

History 

Citrus trees are angiosperms, and the species are almost entirely interfertile. This includes grapefruits, lemons, limes, oranges, and many citrus hybrids. As the interfertility of oranges and other citrus has produced numerous hybrids and cultivars, and bud mutations have also been selected, citrus taxonomy has proven difficult.

The sweet orange, Citrus x sinensis, is not a wild fruit, but arose in domestication in East Asia. It originated in a region encompassing Southern China, Northeast India,^[11] and Myanmar. The fruit was created as a cross between a non-pure mandarin orange and a hybrid pomelo that had a substantial mandarin component. Since its chloroplast DNA is that of pomelo, it was likely the hybrid pomelo, perhaps a pomelo BC1 backcross, that was the maternal parent of the first orange. Based on genomic analysis, the relative proportions of the ancestral species in the sweet orange are approximately 42% pomelo and 58% mandarin. All varieties of the sweet orange descend from this prototype cross, differing only by mutations selected for during agricultural propagation. Sweet oranges have a distinct origin from the bitter orange, which arose independently, perhaps in the wild, from a cross between pure mandarin and pomelo parents.

Sweet oranges have in turn given rise to many further hybrids including the grapefruit, which arose from a sweet orange x pomelo backcross. Spontaneous and engineered backcrosses between the sweet orange and mandarin oranges or tangerines have produced the clementine and murcott. The ambersweet is a complex sweet orange x (Orlando tangelo x clementine) hybrid. The citranges are a group of sweet orange x trifoliate orange (Citrus trifoliata) hybrids.

Arab Agricultural Revolution

Further information: Arab Agricultural Revolution

The Arab Agricultural Revolution spread citrus fruits as far as the Iberian Peninsula. Page from the Hadith Bayad wa Riyad, 13th century

In Europe, the Moors introduced citrus fruits including the bitter orange, lemon, and lime to Al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula during the Arab Agricultural Revolution. Large-scale cultivation started in the 10th century, as evidenced by complex irrigation techniques specifically adapted to support orange orchards. Citrus fruits—among them the bitter orange—were introduced to Sicily in the 9th century during the period of the Emirate of Sicily, but the sweet orange was unknown there until the late 15th century or the beginnings of the 16th century, when Italian and Portuguese merchants brought orange trees into the Mediterranean area.^[11]

Spread across Europe

Shortly afterward, the sweet orange quickly was adopted as an edible fruit. It was considered a luxury food grown by wealthy people in private conservatories, called orangeries. By 1646, the sweet orange was well known throughout Europe; it went on to become the most often cultivated of all fruit trees. Louis XIV of France had a great love of orange trees and built the grandest of all royal Orangeries at the Palace of Versailles. At Versailles, potted orange trees in solid silver tubs were placed throughout the rooms of the palace, while the Orangerie allowed year-round cultivation of the fruit to supply the court. When Louis condemned his finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, in 1664, part of the treasures that he confiscated were over 1,000 orange trees from Fouquet's estate at Vaux-le-Vicomte.

To the Americas

Further information: Columbian exchange

Spanish travelers introduced the sweet orange to the American continent. On his second voyage in 1493, Christopher Columbus may have planted the fruit on Hispaniola. Subsequent expeditions in the mid-1500s brought sweet oranges to South America and Mexico, and to Florida in 1565, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St Augustine. Spanish missionaries brought orange trees to Arizona between 1707 and 1710, while the Franciscans did the same in San Diego, California, in 1769. Archibald Menzies, the botanist on the Vancouver Expedition, collected orange seeds in South Africa, raised the seedlings onboard, and gave them to several Hawaiian chiefs in 1792. The sweet orange came to be grown across the Hawaiian Islands, but its cultivation stopped after the arrival of the Mediterranean fruit fly in the early 1900s. Florida farmers obtained seeds from New Orleans around 1872, after which orange groves were established by grafting the sweet orange on to sour orange rootstocks. 

Etymology

Main article: Orange (word)

The word "orange" derives ultimately from Proto-Dravidian or Tamil நாரம் (nāram). From there the word entered Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga), meaning 'orange tree'. The Sanskrit word reached European languages through Persian نارنگ (nārang) and its Arabic derivative نارنج (nāranj).^[25]

The word entered Late Middle English in the 14th century via Old French pomme d'orenge. Other forms include Old Provençal auranja, Italian arancia, formerly narancia. In several languages, the initial n present in earlier forms of the word dropped off because it may have been mistaken as part of an indefinite article ending in an n sound. In French, for example, une norenge may have been heard as une orenge. This linguistic change is called juncture loss. The color was named after the fruit, with the first recorded use of orange as a color name in English in 1512

Nutrition

Oranges, raw,
all commercial varieties

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy	197 kJ (47 kcal)
Carbohydrates	11.75 g
Sugars	9.35 g
Dietary fiber	2.4 g
Fat	0.12 g
Protein	0.94 g
Vitamins	Quantity %DV†
Vitamin A equiv.	1% 11 μg
Thiamine (B1)	7% 0.087 mg
Riboflavin (B2)	3% 0.04 mg
Niacin (B3)	2% 0.282 mg
Pantothenic acid (B5)	5% 0.25 mg
Vitamin B6	4% 0.06 mg
Folate (B9)	8% 30 μg
Choline	2% 8.4 mg
Vitamin C	59% 53.2 mg
Vitamin E	1% 0.18 mg
Minerals	Quantity %DV†
Calcium	3% 40 mg
Iron	1% 0.1 mg
Magnesium	2% 10 mg
Manganese	1% 0.025 mg
Phosphorus	1% 14 mg
Potassium	6% 181 mg
Zinc	1% 0.07 mg
Other constituents	Quantity
Water	86.75 g
Link to USDA Database entry
†Percentages estimated using US recommendations for adults,except for potassium, which is estimated based on expert recommendation from the National Academies.

Orange flesh is 87% water, 12% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat (see table). As a 100 gram reference amount, orange flesh provides 47 calories, and is a rich source of vitamin C, providing 64% of the Daily Value. No other micronutrients are present in significant amounts (see table).

Phytochemicals

Oranges contain diverse phytochemicals, including carotenoids (beta-carotene, lutein and beta-cryptoxanthin), flavonoids (e.g. naringenin) and numerous volatile organic compounds producing orange aroma, including aldehydes, esters, terpenes, alcohols, and ketones.Orange juice contains only about one-fifth the citric acid of lime or lemon juice (which contain about 47 g/L).

Taste

The taste of oranges is determined mainly by the ratio of sugars to acids, whereas orange aroma derives from volatile organic compounds, including alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, terpenes, and esters. Bitter limonoid compounds, such as limonin, decrease gradually during development, whereas volatile aroma compounds tend to peak in mid– to late–season development. Taste quality tends to improve later in harvests when there is a higher sugar/acid ratio with less bitterness. As a citrus fruit, the orange is acidic, with pH levels ranging from 2.9 to 4.0. Taste and aroma vary according to genetic background, environmental conditions during development, ripeness at harvest, postharvest conditions, and storage duration.