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The carrot (Daucus carota) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white in color with a woody texture. The edible part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer while building up the stout taproot, which stores large amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The flowering stem grows to about 1 m tall, with umbels of white flowers.
Uses Carrots can be eaten raw, whole, chopped or grated into salads for color, and are also often chopped and cooked in soups and stews. A well known dish is Carrots Julienne. One can also make carrot cake and carrot pudding. The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten. Together with onion and celery, carrots are one of the primary vegetables used in a mirepoix to make various broths. Since the late 1980s, baby carrots or mini carrots, carrots that have been peeled and cut into uniform cylinders, have been a popular ready-to-eat snack food in many supermarkets. β-carotene, a dimer of Vitamin A, is abundant in the carrot and gives this vegetable its characteristic orange color. Furthermore, carrots are rich in dietary fiber, antioxidants, and minerals. Carrot juice is also widely marketed. History The wild ancestors of the carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the center of diversity of D. carota. The familiar wild plant wild carrot, sometimes called Queen Anne's lace, is the same species as the garden carrot (which was bred from it); garden carrots that run to seed soon revert to their wild prototype, with a forking carroty-smelling, edible root that quickly becomes too woody and bitter to eat. The parsnip is a close relative of the carrot. Cultivars
Eastern carrots Eastern carrots were domesticated in Central Asia, probably in modern-day Afghanistan in the 10th century or possibly earlier. Those of the eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow in color, and often have branched roots. The purple color common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments. Western carrots The Western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 15th or 16th century, its orange color making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. The orange color results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars. While orange carrots are nearly ubiquitous in the West, other colors do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple. These other colors of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops. The Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University has developed a purple-skinned, orange-fleshed carrot, the BetaSweet (also known as the Maroon Carrot), with substances to prevent cancer, which has recently entered commercial distribution. Western carrot cultivars are commonly classified by their root shape: While any carrot can be harvested before reaching its full size as a more tender "baby" carrot, some fast-maturing cultivars have been bred to produce smaller roots. The most extreme examples produce round roots about 2.5 cm (1 inch) in diameter. These small cultivars are also more tolerant of heavy or stony soil than long-rooted cultivars such as 'Nantes' or 'Imperator'. The "baby carrots" sold ready-to-eat in supermarkets, are however often not from a smaller cultivar of carrot, but are simply full-sized carrots that have been sliced and peeled to make carrot sticks of a uniform shape and size. Carrot flowers are pollinated primarily by bees. Seed growers use honeybees or mason bees for their pollination needs. Carrots are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Common Swift, Garden Dart, Ghost Moth, Large Yellow Underwing and Setaceous Hebrew Character. Novelty carrots Food enthusiasts and researchers have obtained other varieties of carrots through traditional breeding methods. One particular species lacks the usual orange pigment from carotenes, owing its white color to a recessive gene for tocopherol (Vitamin E). Derived from Daucus carota L. and patented (US patent Trivia See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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