General information about citrus fruits

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The genus of citrus fruits (Citrus.L) includes lemons, oranges, mandarins, grapefruits and others. These are evergreen trees or shrubs. This bush grows all year round, so a single plant can have twigs, buds, flowers and fruits that grow on the same plant. This is especially true of lemons. The leaves live from 15 months to 3-4 years, but are constantly changing.

Homeland of citrus fruits is Southeast Asia. They are distributed in China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, the southern part of the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Africa and other countries. Here the height of the tree is 7 m. reaches. The leaves are thick and covered with many glands that contain essential oil. Citrus plants belong to the group of mycorrhizal plants.

Flowering period
Citrus plants bloom mainly in spring. Lemons, on the other hand, bloom sparingly throughout the growing season. The flowers are bisexual or functional male flowers, white to rarely pink, fragrant. It is pollinated from the outside and from itself. Many species produce fruit without pollination (fertilization). The flowers are formed on annual branches growing on one- to three-year-old branches.

Benefits of citrus fruits
The fruit of the citrus plant is a multicellular berry. The pieces of flesh consist of a sac of sap on the outside of each nest. Each fruit contains 1-32 or more seeds, some species do not. The seeds have 3 to 12 polymer embryos, each of which grows independently. One of the apes was formed by sexual fertilization and the others by vegetative means, ie without fertilization (by means of nutsels). The taste of the fruit is sour, bitter and sweet. On the surface of the skin there are many glands with essential oils.

The fruits of citrus plants are the most useful, medicinal and flavorful. They are rich in sugar (1 - 2 to 15%), citric acid (0,9 - 8%), pectin, A, B, C and other vitamins. Oranges and lemons contain 10-15 times more vitamin C than apples. These fruits are often eaten fresh, and are also used in compotes, syrups, jams, jams, soups, essential oils, citric acid and others.

Conditions for citrus plants
Citrus plants are more resistant to cold. Some species are placed in the following compositions in terms of frost resistance: citron, lemon, grapefruit and piddog, sweet orange, sour orange (bigarpadia), mandarin, kinkan, trifoliate. Trifoliate can withstand temperatures up to 250 C and grows in the open field in Uzbekistan.

Under the harsh climatic conditions of Uzbekistan, citrus plants have been forced to enter the dormant period, which is covered by greenhouses and trenches with frames. Due to the heat transferred from the bottom and walls of the trench, the temperature inside it does not fall below zero. Under such conditions, the young leaves of the plant are fully preserved. In them, the assimilation process continues and plastic substances accumulate.

As the days get a little colder and the soil and air temperatures reach at least 10 °, the lemons and oranges in the trenches begin to produce new shoots. The growth feature of the branches is its periodicity. In Uzbekistan, there are 3 springs of orange and 4 springs of lemon, summer, summer-autumn and autumn. Therefore, the branches vary in age and biological properties. Often the fourth and higher order branches are formed.

Growth cycles and
The growing season for lemons is 180-220 days, for oranges 220-250 days. The sum of the useful temperatures for the normal life of plants must be at least 4000 °.

Lemon is a heat-loving plant. Mandarins require less heat than oranges and lemons. Grapefruit is a heat-loving plant like orange.

All citrus plants, especially oranges, are light-loving plants, but they grow well, even if they are a little cooler in rooms and trenches.

Citrus plants are also demanding to moisture, but do not like too much water. Their soil requirements are largely dependent on grafting. Plants grafted to trifoliate are porous, rich in humus, grow well in water and air. For most citrus plants, the soil reaction environment should be pH-6. In Uzbekistan it grows well in fertile grasslands.

Growing citrus plants
The seeds of citrus plants are propagated by sowing, transplanting and transplanting cuttings. Vaccinated plants are harvested 4 years after transplanting, and those grown from seed are harvested 10-12 years later. Yields are particularly high between the ages of 25 and 50-60. Plants live 50 to 100 years on plantations, and uncultivated oranges live even longer.

Citrus plants differ in productivity. In Georgia, up to 300 kg of oranges and lemons are harvested from each bush. There are 16 species of citrus plants. Of these, oranges, mandarins and lemons are economically important.

Lemon (C.limon L.) has been cultivated in our country for more than 200 years. In the open, the tree can grow up to 4-7 m in height. The fruits are medium-sized, 80-120 g each, sometimes up to 200 g, light green in color, smooth or glabrous, elliptical flesh-yellow. It is rich in acids (4 - 7%) and C (40 - 70%), vitamins A, B, P. It is important as a medicine and tastes good.

Facts
Plants grown in trenches in Uzbekistan are low, ie they do not stop growing at temperatures of 3-5 degrees and enter a dormant period. At 10 to 120 degrees Celsius, it continues to grow. Grows well and yields abundantly in fertile and well-drained soils with a moisture content of 60%. When the temperature drops from 1,5 to 2,50, the lemons and unripe twigs freeze, and at 5 to 60 the plant itself freezes. In Uzbekistan, lemons are grown mainly from many cuttings.

Orange
Orange (C. Sinensis (L) Osb) is one of the most widely grown citrus plants in the world. The tall tree can grow up to 12 m in open ground. Each bush has 100-400 fruits, 7-8 thousand oranges per hectare. The average weight of the fruit is 80-400 g and more. The fruit contains about 8-9% of sugar, 1,06-1,97% of various acids and up to 70 mg% of vitamin C, and the fruit of lemons grown in trenches contains less chemicals. The skin is orange, glabrous or smooth, thick and well separated from the flesh.

Oranges are propagated by sowing, transplanting and grafting. The grafted ones are sown in 3-4 years and the sown ones are harvested in 10-15 years. When grown in trenches, 20-30, some 100-120 pieces are harvested from each bush.

Orange is a very warm and light-loving plant. - At 1,50 - 2,5 the fruit beats cold, the twigs and woody parts can withstand temperatures 0,5-1,00 lower than lemons.

Mandarin
A common cultivated plant. It is a medium-sized tree (up to 3,5 m), without thorns, thick-branched, branched. It produces many functional male flowers.

The fruit is light orange, round or flattened, fleshy, sour, soft, with small seeds, often completely seedless. The seeds are green when cut, which is a characteristic feature of all groups of mandarins. Seedlings are harvested 2-3 years after transplanting. It is especially productive in 10-15 years. Up to 4000 trees can be harvested from each bush. The weight of the fruit is 50 - 100 g. Mandarin is the most cold-resistant citrus plant.

Grapefruit
Grapefruit, i.e. pompelmus (C. paradisi Mosh) up to 10 m tall, yellow, round, the taste of the flesh is sour-bitter, slightly sweeter. Healing - valuable for its dietary properties.

Bigarradiia
Bigarradia is a large thorny tree up to 10 m tall with sour (bitter) orange (C. aurantium L.). The fruit is very sour, even bitter flesh is black, unfit for consumption, has many seeds and is resistant to cold. Sweet orange is a good graft in cultivation and is used in the production of essential oil.

Trifoliate
Trifoliata, a three-leafed lemon (pancirus trifoliata L. Rai) is an evergreen shrub up to 3 m tall, with long spines and three-lobed leaves. The fruit is small, bitter, sour and inedible. It is very resistant to cold. Citrus is the main graft for plants. Lemons are widely grown in Uzbekistan as a citrus crop. In our climate, lemons, a perennial evergreen plant, are grown only in greenhouses.