Within the distant arid desert grows a healthful fruit on date palms that nourishes everyone from the toughest athletes to probably the most delicate infants. Whether you fancy Sukkari, Saggae, Ajwa or Medjool, the variety of dates is as huge and diversified because the ocean. With over 500 sorts of dates, Sukkari is our most prized possession after we seek moist, sweet and caramel-like flavour, whereas Ajwa is the go to for its medicinal healing. Saggae dates are a latest addition for many who prefer a less sweet date than the Sukkari date, and for those who love a fibrous, dense yet moist date.
The origin of dates is unknown on account of historical cultivation however they’re believed to have been cultivated in the Middle East region from around 6000 B.C. Fossil records show that the date palm has existed for not less than 50 million years.
Since their discovery, dates have extensively spread in many regions and had been spread by Arabs to Spain, Italy, South West Asia and North Africa. Then they were further spread by Spaniards to Mexico and California.
The Date Palm
The date palm has separate male and female plants. Solely fifty % of seedlings can be feminine which are grown from seed but because they develop from seed their seedling vegetation are sometimes of lower quality. Most industrial plantations use cuttings of closely cropping cultivars. Medjool is the primary cultivar that produces particularly high yields of large, sweet fruit. Plants grown from cuttings will fruit 2 to 3 years earlier than seedling plants.
The date palm productive life is limited to the years when the tree is smaller and the fruit is less complicated to harvest. Although the date palm is capable of residing as much as a hundred years or more and can reach top between 15-30 metres. Their crown of green leaves grow between 3 to six metres in length.
The Date Pollination Methodology
In a natural setting, dates are pollinated by wind. However, in the commercial orchards they are pollinated manually. Natural pollination occurs with about an equal number of female and male plants. However, one male can pollinate up to one hundred females. The male date palm is valued as a pollinator, this enables the farmers to use their assets for a lot of more fruit producing feminine plants. Some farmers do not even keep any male vegetation as male flowers turn into available at native markets at pollination time. Guide pollination is carried out by skilled labourers using ladders, or in some areas such as Iraq or Saudi Arabia they climb the tree using a special climbing device that wraps across the tree trunk and the farmers back to maintain him connected to the trunk whereas climbing. Much less often, the pollen may be blown onto the feminine flowers by a wind machine.
The Date Seed & How Dates Grow
loose dates contain a single seed about 2-2.5 cm long and 6-eight mm thick. The kind of fruit depends upon the glucose, fructose and sucrose content. The seed of Sukkari is far larger than the seed of Saggae or Ajwa.
Dates grow in large clusters that develop beneath the leaves and might weigh as much as forty pounds. Massive trees will yield more than a 1,000 dates each year, though they do not all ripen on the same time so a number of harvests are required. With a view to get fruit of marketable high quality, the bunches of dates have to be thinned and bagged or covered before ripening so that the remaining fruits develop larger and are protected from weather and pests such as birds.
The Phases of Date Ripening
Dates, in addition to having different colours, tastes and textures throughout their ripening phases, they also have totally different names in Arabic for each stage.
Phases Weeks English Arabic Description
First Stage 1 week – Hababook – The dates are small round and light green with horizontal stripes.
Second Stage 5-17 weeks – Green Date Kimri – The dates turn into oval, greener and are bitter.
Third Stage 19-25 weeks – Red/Yellow Date Khalal – The next stage is the early ripening stage where the dates are yellow or red, have grown to their full dimension and style crunchy however dry with a slight sweet taste.
This is where you’d get a barhi date with a crunchy outer shell.
Fourth Stage 20-28 weeks – Wet Date Rutub – This stage the date is ripe, soft and moist. At this stage you might be enjoying the delightful sukkari dates.
Last Stage 29 weeks – Dried Date Tamar – Remaining stage of ripening. At this stage you will find the saggae, ajwa and medjool date.
The final three levels of ripening are when the dates are picked, fumigated, cleaned, separated, packaged and then sold to the consumer. Barhi dates are the yellow clusters which might be typically found in grocery shops that are crispy and a bit astringent because they’re within the Khalal stage. As soon as the crispy yellow flesh begins to soften, it sweetens and turns into a Rutub like our famous Sukkari Dates. Rutub require refrigeration to lengthen this stage, before they remodel to their last stage of a dried date. Saggae, although it is a dried date, is very soft and moist compared to different dried dates.
